Continuing Messums’ interest in ceramics to connect the viewer and artist through the processes of making, the gallery is proud to announce a new exhibition that demonstrates a deep connection with and knowledge of the material of clay.
‘Liminal and Lenticular’ brings together the work of two talented ceramicists, Nicholas Lees and Greg Payce, to explore their shared preoccupations with edge and volume, material and light, both within and without their vessels.
Lees and Payce create forms from clay that interact with and are made alive by their surroundings. Whether through the revelation of a figurative image in the negative space between vessels, as in Payce’s work, or in the illusory play of light and shadow across the indefinable vessel boundaries, as with Lees, the works provoke a challenge to the viewer, firstly to see and secondly to embrace the constantly shifting image before them. The artists create meaning through uncertainty, of the boundaries and thresholds the viewer perceives, and the revelations there-in.
Both masters of their artform and their material, Lees and Payce have refined their own unique technical approach that results in artworks of incredible elegance and precision, unbelievably from the human hand. Lees brings his leather-hard thrown vessels to the lathe, carving pin-perfect fins into the clay walls. Colour is achieved, not through the glazed surface but, via absorption of a mineral cocktail through the vessel walls. Both careful techniques that appeal to and upend our perceptions of ceramic and the container. Payce’s expertly thrown pots, of impeccable symmetry and balance, work in unison or often choral harmony to reveal images of the figure or portrait within the constructed space between them.
Alongside their ceramics, both artists display their complementary practice. Drawings by Lees demonstrates his preoccupation with redefining and distorting boundaries through the blurring and bleeding of the inked line, much like Lees’ application of colour to clay through liquid dissipation. Payce’s video work further explores sensations of scale and optics in viewing his ceramics, whilst referencing the deep history of the ceramic continuum that informs his practice.