The Gardiner Museum’s first major exhibition of 2010 was unveiled to the media this morning in advance of its official launch tomorrow: From the Melting Pot into the Fire, Contemporary Ceramics in Israel is a complex show, much more conceptual art than pretty pots and vessels.
Ceramic artist Yael Novak, left, whose installation Between the Pots is featured, joined the museum’s Chief Curator Charles Mason in leading the tour. “The show is about identity and sense of place in a multicultural, immigrant society,” said Novak, whose work takes advantage of the negative space “between the pots” to depict the multifarious building forms prevalent throughout the nation. “You have the iconic architectural shapes of Israel,” says the artist, “the influence of the kibbutz but also the domed and minaret shapes of the Arabic villages. The installation combines my two loves, architecture and pottery but I created my landscape out of air; architecture is about volume, my architecture is air, it’s an illusion.’
More than half of the 37 works on display here (whittled down from 110 originally shown in the 2007 Fourth Biennale for Israeli Ceramics in Tel Aviv) are concerned with homes and houses, like Daphna Leshem’s City-Container, above.
“There’s a lot about architecture,” acknowledges Novak, “but we did not go into the subtext of this. You have houses on wheels, the floating houses, the houses that are actually cardboard boxes, these are all metaphors for the very fragile nature of our existence in the area.”
Notes Mason: “The title of the exhibition is a comment on the fact that Isreal is a cultural melting pot that draws Jews and others from all over the world coming together to form a common identity as modern Israelis.”
Another curious wrinkle is that all but two of the works on display here are by female artists. “Ninety-five per cent of ceramic artists in Israel are women,” states Novak, “and the reason for that is that as the traditional providers of family income men could not spend the time on ceramic art because it’s very difficult to make a living this way. We do have men doing this but it’s mostly women.” Homemakers, you might say.
Photos by Christopher Jones
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If only I could express myself as creatively and as beautifully as these people incredible people do.
Add in the bridging of cultures, and all I can say is that this exhibition should be a sure success.
Amazing show! a must see.
Wrote about it in my blog: http://www.mikanovsky.com/blog/2010/02/08/gardiner-museums-from-the-melting-pot-into-the-fire/
Cheers