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To This I Put My NameClaire Curneen

18 January - 16 March 2014

Download the Ceramics Seminar PDF here


 

Mission Gallery presents a new body of work by internationally renowned ceramicist, Claire Curneen. This Mission Gallery & Ruthin Craft Centre Touring Exhibition is the result of a Creative Wales Ambassador Award given by the Arts Council of Wales in 2011/2012.

Curneen’s work is filled with Christian iconography influenced by her Irish Roman Catholic upbringing; saints, martyrs, and relics. Often the figures convey a charged moment of suffering which is juxtaposed by their peaceful, sometimes eerie, expression; an expression of their devotion. As Prof. Elizabeth Moignard describes in her essay, “there is also, as others have suggested, a sense that they have come out on the other side of their ordeal, and are demonstrating survival, the value of their suffering as indicated by the gilt blood, and the capacity to look away from it”: a sense that continues to present itself in her new work.

From February 2012, Curneen investigated the vast collections at Collins Barracks, National Museum of Ireland in Dublin which houses the Decorative Arts & History Collection guided by then curator Dr. Audrey Whitty. Discovering objects hidden away in the reserve collections, ranging from 17th/18th century Japanese porcelain to 19th century Irish Belleek, to Yuan Dynasty Chinese celadon and a late Qing Dynasty Chinese soft-paste grotto. The Corleck Head and the Gaignieres Fonthill Vase, 14th century Yuan Dynasty, presented Curneen with the notions of the travelled object and the construction. Taking these notions with her, Curneen then spent six months resident in Mission Gallery drawing and observing the exhibition space, always keeping Mission Gallery, an old sea-man’s chapel, in her thoughts.

The exhibition opens with a private viewing at 3pm Saturday 18th January and continues until the 16th March. The exhibition then tours to Ruthin Craft Centre from 12th April until 29th June 2014. Mission Gallery will host a Ceramics Seminar on 1st February with ceramicists Claire Curneen, Anne Gibbs and Ingrid Murphy chaired by Catherine Roche, artist, writer and lecturer.

To accompany the exhibition there is a publication with essays by Dr. Audrey Whitty, Curator of European and Asian Glass, The Corning Museum of Glass, New York, formerly Curator of Ceramics, Glass and Asian collections, National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks, Dublin, Teleri Lloyd Jones, Assistant Editor at Crafts Magazine, Crafts Council, Leslie Ferrin, curator and a founder of Ferrin Gallery, Massachusetts, USA and Prof. Elizabeth Moignard, Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at University of Glasgow.



About Claire Curneen

Curneen is a senior lecturer at Cardiff School of Art & Design, Cardiff Metropolitan University. Originally from Ireland, she studied at Cork, Belfast and Cardiff.

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