Resistor (2001)

Part of an exhibition of works in clay, curated by Jenni Lomax.

Participating artists: Lynda Benglis (Lake Charles, USA, 1941) Phoebe Cummings (Walsall, UK, 1981) Chiara Camoni (Piacenza, Italy, 1974) Lucio Fontana (Rosario, Argentina, 1899 - Varese, Italy, 1968) Anya Gallaccio (Paisley, UK, 1963) Keith Harrison (West Bromwich, UK, 1967) Phillip King (Tunis, Tunisia, 1934 - London, UK, 2021) Serena Korda (London, UK, 1979) Leoncillo Leonardi (Spoleto, Italy, 1915 - Rome, Italy, 1968) Andrew Lord (Rochdale, UK, 1950) Magdalene A. N. Odundo (Nairobi, Kenya, 1950) Lawson Oyekan (London, UK, 1961) Masaomi Yasunaga (Osaka, Japan, 1982).

Exhibition description:

In Powell and Pressburger’s 1946 film A Matter of Life and Death, David Niven’s character, a World War II fighter pilot, bails out of his burning Lancaster bomber without a parachute. He lands on a familiar shore, seemingly well. However, he soon discovers that he is neither alive nor dead and is having to bargain for life in a space somewhere between Heaven and Earth.

Lucio Fontana arrived in Italy from Argentina as young child in 1905, at the start of a 25-year sequence of devastating earthquakes that ravaged much of the country. This catastrophic, elemental disruption has been widely acknowledged as having considerable bearing on the eruptive quality of Fontana’s early sculptures in clay - a material he loved for its organic malleability and sensual characteristics. He worked rapidly in an improvised way, creating sculptures that held movement and gesture whilst also generating a sensation of light and space, referring to them as ‘terremotata ma ferma’ (‘earthquaked but motionless’).

During the course of their careers these artists – who span several generations – have made ceramic sculptures and installations that confront the possibility of catastrophe, and embody the physicality and energy of their creation. Whether using clay that is raw or has been fired, their work carries a sense of danger and conveys the understanding that the properties and processes of clay are precarious. Earth, moisture, temperature and air create change when they collide, either by accident or design, causing the transformation from one state to another, provoking an incalculable space that holds both fragility and strength.

• https://flash---art.it/article/a-matter-...
• https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/04/...