In conjunction with Thiébaut Chagué’s installation of a wood-fired kiln at Messums West and the exhibition of his work, we displayed a presentation of sculptural ceramics by the contemporary French artist, Sandrine Bringard. Bringard was taught by Chagué and spent a year in residence working at his studio, experimenting with high- temperature wood-firing and learning from his expertise.
Her ceramic work focuses on the theme of the body and body parts, investigating notions of the interior – the invisible and the suggested, and the exterior – the visible and space. Bringard’s work in clay maintains a physical relationship with the earth as she describes, ‘this material endowed with a memory which has the capacity to record the pressure of its fingers’. The evolution of her work leads her to the use of other materials, for example, rubber, wool, rope, wood, and neoprene in filaments, integrating further colour and texture.
Water remains a determining element and a source of inspiration in Bringard’s practice, fuelled by the writings of the philosopher, Gaston Bachelard. Water that is never present but evoked by textures, by objects borrowed from the aquatic environment which mutate and merge with the body or part of the body. She treats the body as a container filled with thoughts, moods and fluids. The body parts and limbs she creates are, in her words, ‘exhibited as autonomous “individuals”, seemingly free to move guided by their feelings’.
