Paul Roche who has taught ceramics at the West Wales School of Art for twenty five years, has produced a stunning collection of witty and wonderful objects .
“My current making is concerned with ‘What if?’.
Everyday life is filled with contact with the ordinary, the commonplace. What if I took everyday things into the realm of fantasy, stretching visual credulity by introducing bizarre elements and presenting humorous possibilities?
Commonplace objects such as smoothing irons, food mixers, electric fans and hair dryers have long excited me. My perception of them has filled the pages of many of my drawing books for several years. Then early in 2006 I began making them in clay, celebrating the tactile immediacy of that is ceramics.
In my attempts to make household objects less ordinary, I have emphasised and exaggerated form, altered scale and proportion, added texture and decoration where there was none and often ignored purpose. Some pieces resemble colourful neo-baroque architecture whilst others take on the character of automotive styling, capturing the movement of speed machines banking on bends unfettered by power cables.”
Mick Morgan,also teaches at the college and has a longstanding reputation as an exquisite potter. His new works on show are large sculptural vessel, minimal and majestic.
“I never leave the beach without a pebble. Choosing just one is very difficult and results in massive deliberation as to which is ‘the best’.
It occurred to me that I could make them and give them a function ~ the function isn’t a primary factor, the forms are.”
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