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"milk" Tag


Semenova’s Moloko


Thursday, May 18, 2017

 

The Russian artist Ekaterina Semenova work, Care for Milk, deals with the massive industrialization of milk and attempts to reclaim, or analyse the prior use and value of the popular dairy product. Semonva appears to be fascinated with milk, actually the dairies in general, she graduated from Eindhoven Design Academy in 2016 and it is possible that the Dutch admiration for dairy has reached to an extent by which it has begun to influence her work. The piece consists of various ceramic cups, plates and bowls that have been dipped in dairy products, resulting in a sort of faint dairy glaze that created various shades of silky brown. According to Semenova’s website, the effects of the dairy dipping also makes the clay more durable and waterproof, and depending on the amount of fat in the used milk, resulted in varying coloured remains on the ceramics. The dairy products used for the glazing come from dairy waste as the work also focuses on the over production of milk.

https://www.ekaterinasemenova.com/careformilk

Semenova’s work can be connected to the Faux subject from the little white booklet that accompanied the exhibition in which the dairy dipped cups were shown. Faux, meaning made in imitation, taken from the French word for false, suits Semenova’s dipping. Although the dipping of the ceramics is not a false act or trying to imitate anything other than what it actually is, as an object on its own disconnected from its context simply looks like beautiful colouring of ceramics. Thereby the faux subject is rather sweet suiting, as although it is not fake it might look fake. A reaction to the dairy dipped pottery could easily be that the cups are not dipped in dairies and instead in watercolour or some sort of ceramic glazing. Hence my choice of Semenov’s work, as it’s rather amusingly pretty and charming to know that the carefully flawless cups are simply dipped in varying fatty milks that constitute to the attractive brown shades. The idea was rather simple, to dip things into a substance as ordinary as milk, however the result was rather delightful. Although I found the display of the works along with the space itself uninviting. Semenova’s work sort of disappeared in the corner of the room behind the sweat-smudged glass. As discovered on her website, the work should be accompanied with milk and the pouring of milk, and viewing it behind glass made it seem as if it was an exhibit of ancient pottery at an anthropological museum.

 

Care for Milk 2016 Earthenware dipped in various dairy products, Ekaterina Semenova exh.cat.no3-faux

How deep can you go?


Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Lucie Rie’s story
Born as Lucie Gomperz in Vienna, she grew up in a Jewish family of Sigmund Freud consultants. After studying pottery at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule her success came immediately. She could exhibit at the Paris International Exhibition and won there a few years later the silver medal. In 1938, when she was thirty-six years old, she flew to England because of Nazism. She got to know the nineteen years old Hans Coper (also a fugitive of the Nazi regime) and worked with him together from 1946 until 1958.[x]
Mostly Lucie Rie and Hans Coper are called “British Potters” even tough they are neither from England but refugees.

 

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Lucie Rie’s speciality

In some parts of her life she didn’t see a purpose in her objects. But at least with the work of Coper it came fully back to her. She was not following the conventional process of bisque-firing her work, then glazing and re-firing it. Instead she was very experimental and loved to put her glace direct onto the unfired clay before the first bisque.

 

surface

 

Lucie Rie in the Stedelijk

In the Stedelijk Museum you’ll find two vases and a plate by Lucie  and a corporation work with Hans Coper. The objects go back to 1953 when Rie and Coper mostly worked together. Rie’s series shows mostly white glazed vases in porcelain. Her work on the surface was very creative. For these objects she used needles to make scratches in the porcelain, which she filled with another colour of glaze. From the look you cannot say if the objects are out of earthenware or something else. Fed with some knowledge you get to know about the content of the ceramics — porcelain. The corporation with Coper, could have been from nowedays. A tea service set in stoneware, black glace — timeless. Even though Coper was mostly a assistant to Rie both names are engraved in the ceramic.

 

Coper-Rie

 

Lucie Rie’s surface

Lucie Rie’s way of dealing with the surface attracts me a lot. It is hard to simply stand in front of it in the museum. You want to interact with her art.

«She found her satisfaction in a needle.

A needle to change the surface.

Drive it deep to change the outside — the visible.

To change the way it feels under your hands. Striation.

My imagination.

But, you’re standing in front of a big thick safety glass.

Her object far away of your senses of touch.

Trying to experience the surface by simply looking at it.

How?

Will I ever experience what she experienced with her hands?

I don’t want to see it from the inside.

No.

I want to feel the surface like she did, sitting on the throwing wheel.

Layering glace on that shape.

Let it dry a little.

Take the needle.

Carve through the porcelain — long elegant scratches.

How must it have sounded?

Fill the scratches with a dark colour.

Fire it.

How did the look change?

Let it cool down.

Hold it. Enjoy it. This softness. Smoothness.

Gently drive the finger around the belly of the vase.

Oh, I wish I could experience the surfaces of Lucie Rie’s.»

 

Ceramic surface study

Lucie Rie used among other things the needle to manipulate the surface. In my first text I showed work by  Ekaterina Semenova who found other inspiring ways to do so by… using milk — old, food waste milk.


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