Irish Contemporary Ceramics 2006
Curator's Comments

These comments offer a brief statistical and technical account that tries to provide some of the pertinent details of the method used in selecting the work for this exhibition. The hope is that this approach may encourage in all the artists involved and in their audiences a clearer understanding of how the decisions taken were reached.

But before getting down to such matters it seems worthwhile to offer some general value judgement on the exhibition as a whole. No improvement in this regard can be found on the comments made by the selector of the previous ICC exhibition in 2000, Michael Robinson. He said then very clearly in the 2000 catalogue something that still applies now to the work of today. It is well worth repeating even at some length.

“…it is quite obvious that another orthodoxy governs the situation today, one that was only surfacing thirty years ago – the sculptural. That limited, historicising attitude toward form, materials, functions and standards has been replaced by such a diversity of personal applications of, and approaches to materials and all the processes they employ and suggest, that not only has ceramic become an entirely different field of activity but our awareness of sculpture and its role in our lives has altered also. It is no longer a secretive, restricted access part of the ‘fine’ arts. It is an unbelievably diverse, decorative art that all of us can relate to, enjoy and use. There is hardly an aspect of historical ceramics that we have not researched and applied if useful to our needs, and our own experiments and discoveries have expanded the meaning of the word ceramic. Irish Contemporary Ceramics today means the sculptural, the decorative and the bewilderingly diverse.

This diversity, however, makes dealing with the work, and pulling it all together under one umbrella very difficult.

Times change and no doubt thirty years from now someone else will be looking at a set of conventions in the field of ceramics that will make ours seem as dated as those of the seventies do now. I hope they will share one set of values common to all ceramics so far and that is the pride in performance. Ceramics is not just playing with wet clay and then hardening it by the application of a big hair-dryer. It is a very complex multi-process business in which every part of the making contributes to the whole, and the firing is still the most crucial part of the creative act. This is a fact seemingly lost on many sculptors today who turn to clay simply because of the ease of working its plasticity seems to offer. Ceramics is not like any other medium. It is deceivingly difficult to know and to control, but what it has to offer, as this exhibition demonstrates is versatility and a personality that no other medium can even hint at. I wonder if even the good Lord can imagine what it will be doing thirty years from now.

ICC 2006 was selected from the submissions made by 49 artists. Of the 136 works submitted 100 were selected for the exhibition; they constitute the work of 34 artists. The submitted work of 15 artists remained unselected. Of those 15, 7 took up the offer I made to all 15 to write to them to say something particular about their work and how I reached the decision in regard to their work. What follows here is the general orientation of my approach given to them. Each of the 7 was given, as well, critical comments specifically related to their artworks. Understandably they are not needed here.

My own experiences in making curatorial judgements, in witnessing how they have been made by others, and in being on the receiving end of such judgements in regard to my own work have convinced me that curators should, if at all possible, make an effort to give reasons for their decisions especially in the case of those artists whose work remains unselected.It seems to me that the best way to offer a critique is to try to comprehensively describe what the work of art or work of design actually deals with; what it is about; how it has been made, by whom and for whom. If this can be done satisfactorily then the artist will find in such a description the ‘reason’ for the decision, and can then consider how best to proceed in future work. The attempt in all this effort is to lessen the mystery, the arbitrariness, which often clouds the results of a selection process.

Representation: only concerns what references the artist makes to things that are not actually there in the work itself. This involves two approaches: The first aims at describing what the work depicts; what is not actually, not physically there in the work but what the work refers to.  This includes any and all references to matters of literal-visual representation: to the ways things look in the world, to ideas and concepts, to stories that are told, and to the way things happen in the world.  The second type of representation, very importantly, emphasises emotional representation. Here the attempt is made to find the words, the analogies and the metaphors that attempt to describe the feelings, the moods, the emotions that the work refers to. Such things are also not actually physically there in the work but the artist can and does, through the work, refer to them by expressing them and trying to arouse them in the audience.

Presentation: centres only on what is actually, physically given: what lies there directly in the work itself. This is what the work actually presents to the audience, what is given, not merely referred to. It involves asking a series of questions whose answers bring clearly to mind the materials and the media used, and the evidence that remains of the tools used in putting the work together. And, importantly, it includes describing the ‘design behaviour’, the ways in which the work shows how the artist chose, combined and integrated the various elements of design: line, shape, tone, colour, texture, and how these five elements, in turn, go on, through the artist’s efforts, to make up five more:  form, pattern, space, structure and the composition overall.

Audience: here attention centres on people, artists and others. Questions are put, and the answers gathered in the attempt to bring to mind who the artist is, her/him-self - the one who made the work. It then tries to detect evidence in the work of those people whose influences may possibly bear on the professional and personal experiences of the artist. Further, it considers all the other people, those for whom the artist made the work, and those to whom the artist makes appeal, or wants to serve or address in the work and all those, as well, who may eventually have access to the work in the future. The answers to these questions can come from available ready-made facts and from imaginative speculation and intuitive detective (guess) work.

All these areas of concern in the normal course of events come thoroughly mixed and integrated in the varied ways works of art and design are made and in the ways in which the audiences listen to and deal with  art/design works. In contrast this approach briefly outlined above depends on a deliberate, artificial, and temporary separation of the three areas so that probing questions can be put to each in depth.  Using this approach provides a reliable guide that is available if and when needed. It is based on putting comprehensive questions to the work and being able to comprehensively listen to the answers the artwork gives, to what the work has to say for itself and for the artist who made it and, ultimately, what the culture in which it was made has to say for itself through the artist and the artwork. A work of art/design always stands ready to give up its answers to those in its audience who have the imaginative curiosity and intuition to ask the right probing questions and gather the answers.

The claim is that using this approach means that nothing important or basic about the work will be taken for granted, or left out of consideration because of inattention, or lack of thoroughness or due to some personal preference, to bias or prejudice.

Those subjective influences indicate that a fourth area of judgement, one that may be for some just as important as the other three, must also be considered. It deals with personal preference or bias: the like-dislike judgement. Every work of art/design meets with these personal, intuitive, sometimes knee-jerk responses from its audience. For some people it stands as the most important judgement that can be made, or need be made; it is the standard way of making judgements in our consumer society. So, in dealing with a work the like-dislike judgement can, must and should be made- clearly, openly declared - before any serious attempt is taken to listen comprehensively to a work on its own terms, the artist’s own terms. Once the like-dislike judgement is openly recognised for what it is and kept in mind (and so not taken for granted) its ability to distort further thought about the work, or disrupt the listening process that tries to deal comprehensively with the work on the work’s terms, is lessened and brought under some control and become less threatening to a fair and proper judgement.

So the aim in this year’s adjudication was to listen in this comprehensive way to each and every work the artists offered and to try not to let the like-dislike judgement dictate the results. For this reason and in this way I hope that the 2006 selection acknowledges and affirms the diversity and pride in performance that Michael Robinson speaks of as being the continuing hallmark of contemporary practice in ceramic art.

Great thanks are extended to those who were especially instrumental in bringing this exhibition to the Limerick audiences: all the artists, selected/unselected; Neil Reid, Henry Pim, and Lisa Young at NCAD; at LCGA, the staff: Siobhan O’Reilly, Anthony Hickey and Ann Murphy, and, there on the FAS Scheme: Joanie Corrigan, Mike Duffy, Morris Foley, John Haugh and Maria O’Sullivan, all under the direction of Mike Fitzpatrick.

My work in this exhibition is dedicated to the memory of the ceramic artist, Sarah Ryan whose untimely death has meant a great loss to many. RIP

Paul M. O’Reilly