Although the International Asia-Pacific Contemporary Ceramic Invitational Exhibition has been on show over the last month, it reached its high point this weekend with the arrival of many of the artists, who are drawn from eight countries in the Asia Pacific region. Each gave a series of seminars on various aspects of their art, which most agree is going through a crucial transitional period at the present time.
The Taipei County Yingko Ceramics Museum where the seminars were held is one of the largest institutions in the region dedicated to ceramics and pottery. The establishment of the museum, according to Wu Chin-feng (
The largest groups of artists come from Korea and Japan, who have a similar pottery tradition to that of Taiwan and in many cases face the same obstacles. An entrenched tradition of utilitarian pottery ware, most notably with Taiwan's handmade teapots, has tended to circumscribe the development of new ideas, said Chen Cheng-Hsun (
PHOTO COURTESY OF YINGKO CERAMICS MUSEUM
Ohi went on to point out that for him, ceramic vessels are not complete in themselves, but interact with their environment. For this reason, Ohi has extended his work to architecture and interior design, creating "installations" in which ceramic work is an integral part.
Much of the work that makes up the current invitational exhibition is very different from that on display throughout the museum in that they are clearly not functional. The first two floors of the museum are dedicated to traditional teapot and vases, along with displays of traditional clay working methods -- so the third floor, with works such as Onlie Ong's Cooking Series -- Stir Frying, a black iron wok containing a stir fry of nuts, bolts and other hardware, all made from clay but designed to look like the real thing, comes as something of a surprise.
Ong, who is from Taiwan, but now works out of his Pine Lodge Studio in New Zealand, said that he approaches his work primarily as an artist -- as opposed to a potter.
PHOTO COURTESY OF YCM
"I didn't begin studying pottery until I went to New Zealand," he said. "This gives me much more freedom that locally trained potters. I don't have to follow a tradition."
Works from his cooking series aim to express the immigrant experience. A bowl of barbed wire, which resembled fried noodles, are suggestive of how Asians are finding their own place in pastoral New Zealand. This follows a series of ceramic bananas, a visual representation of the joke about Chinese immigrants -- that they are yellow on the outside but white on the inside. "But I also make more utilitarian objects such as bowls and plates," admitted Ong, "because they sell much better."
But this exhibition was mostly about pushing ceramic art to the limits, and in this process, Taiwan hopes to play an increasingly big role. "Taiwan has a very big antenna," Ohi said, referring to the openness of Taiwan's potters to influences from around the world.
PHOTO COURTESY OF YCM
As the same time, he pointed out that the traditions of Chinese ceramics have been well preserved in Taiwan, and "ultimately, the source of Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese pottery all derive from China."
Park Sun Woo, a professor at the Department of Ceramics at the Seoul National University of Technology agreed, but echoed artists from Taiwan and Japan in finding a balance between the forces of internationalization and localization. "We want to preserve what is unique in the Korean tradition," he said "the elements of extreme simplicity and so on."
During the seminar, a question that arose more than once was a definition of the ceramic art as it pushes closer and closer to being an undifferentiated part of the contemporary art scene. While pottery, unlike other plastic arts, has a strong craft tradition that has brought it into the everyday life of people.
PHOTO COURTESY OF YCM
As it seeks to extend its boundaries, it comes up against questions of definition that would probably not be raised in association with traditional art materials such as bronze or marble.
"We have to make a new concept of the craft," said Ohi, and it is this role that he sees an institution such as the Yingko Ceramics Museum playing. From experimental works such as Chen Jing-liang's (
Asked why he set out on making his series of weird dancing tea pots, Ishijima said: "Well, I like tea pots, I wanted to give them more dynamism." With the interest this exhibition has created in the ceramic arts community in Taiwan, we can certainly expect more dynamism across the whole field of this art form.
The Yingko Ceramics Museum is open from 9:30am to 5pm Tuesday to Friday, closing at 8pm on Saturday and 6pm on Sunday. More information can be obtained at the museum's Web site at: http://www.ceramics.tpc.gov.tw. or by calling (02) 8677-4104.
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