clay / body by Anna GLEESON 22.5 -20.6.2021

Presented by Contemporary Crafts Centre

clay

body

by Anna GLEESON

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Contemporary Crafts Centre

Shop H, Hollywood Building

186 Hollywood Road

Sheung Wan

Hong Kong

22.5 - 20.6.2021

12:30pm - 7pm, Tuesday-Sunday

Mon by appointment

Anna GLEESON

I’m interested in vessels because they have an inside and an outside; a hole, an edge and a rim. I like the way they can stand in for the figure; seeming to have ankles, hips, arms, lips, ears and an attitude. I have been drawing vessels I find in museums for years; I like the way they communicate across culture and time. Looking at an ancient Mesopotamian pot in the Louvre I think, I know what you mean. I know how to handle it and what I might use it for; it has an obvious relationship to the body. The paintings and prints of vessels here are my reading of that language. Or maybe a kind of fan art.

Craftsmanship is something I admire and think of as being out of my reach, having not the patience nor the faithfulness to one material required to attain it. I’ve watched an ikebana practitioner working with flowers and the way she knew how far to bend a stem before it would snap; all of the hours she had spent in contact with stems had given her a kind of knowledge in her fingertips. Craftsmanship is about an intimacy with materials and staying just inside the limits of the materials.

I’m interested in what happens when I push materials beyond what will work into failure. I deliberately set up new ways of working that mess with and complicate an existing mode of making. I’m curious to see how it will fail; what that failure might look like. Working this way feels connected to some of my earliest childhood memories of making - not being as good at it as I’d like, not having the right kind of glue and being anyway completely absorbed in the attempt.

我對陶瓷器皿感興趣，是因為它們擁有內部和外部；一個開口、一條邊角、一個環緣。我正喜歡陶器具有代表人的特徵，就像人一樣擁有腳踝、臀部、手臂、嘴唇、耳朵以及態度。自多年前起我繪畫了很多被收藏於博物館裡的陶器。我喜歡它們跨文化和跨時代的交流，例如看著羅浮宮中一個古老的美索不達米亞鍋，我便明白箇中的意思，容器與人的身體有明顯的關係，讓我知道如何處理陶器以及善用它。繪畫陶器讓我可解讀它的語言，算是向陶器一種致敬吧！

我非常欣賞工藝，但又自知無法超越，我自覺未有這樣的能耐和恆心去達致一種工藝的臻善。我曾經觀察過一名日本花藝師，她處理花朵時，知道如何彎曲花莖但又不會令它折斷。她花上多少時間才可瞭如指掌。工藝受制於物料，但兩者之間卻有著密切的關係。

製作陶器時把材料推向無法預知的狀況，或失敗或成功是十分有趣的過程，我刻意建立新的模式使既定的製作工序變得更混亂和複雜化。我很好奇將會如何帶來失敗的效果和模樣。這種製作陶器的方式與我童年時最初的創作記憶有關，我反而喜愛這種不完美的製作過程，享受全神貫注的感覺。

Anna GLEESON was born and grew up in a farming and coal-mining region of Australia. As a kid she stared out the car window at big, sometimes ruined landscapes. At age sixteen she spent an exchange year in Dresden (where there were a lot of bitter old ladies waiting at bus stops). Anna studied Media Arts at Sydney College of the Arts and, after graduating, quickly decided never to make a film again. After stints in Berlin, New York and Tokyo, where she worked across craft, illustration and art, Anna settled in Hong Kong in 2011 where she has been working, primarily as an artist, since. Anna also published ‘ha wan pao’ (2012 - 2016). Her current work spans painting, print-making and sculpture. She has exhibited in Tokyo, Taipei, Sydney, Melbourne and Hong Kong. She is represented by Modern Times in Melbourne.

Anna GLEESON 生於澳洲，在農場和採煤的地區成長。小時候常凝視車廂窗外的大風景，不時發現被破壞的郊野。16歲時她到德勒斯登（Dresden）交流一年（那裡的巴士站總見有很多看來苦澀的老婆婆在等候）。Anna在悉尼藝術學院修讀媒體藝術，畢業後隨即已決定不再從事電影製作。她遊走柏林、紐約及東京，涉獵手工藝、插畫和藝術工作，於2011年定居香港，從此成為職業藝術家。Anna 於2012至2016年創辦獨立雜誌《下環報》(Ha Wan Pao)。目前創作範疇涵蓋繪畫、版畫和雕塑，並曾在東京、台北、悉尼、墨爾本和香港舉辦展覽。在墨爾本由雜誌《Modern Times》代理其部分作品。

Blue and White Pot

Arylic on paper

70 x 100 cm

Stoneware with Glaze

8 x 6 x 12 cm

Spilling Mouth

Screened monoprint, woodblock ink, acrylic on paper

16 x 22.5 cm

"I have been drawing vessels I find in museums for years; I like the way they communicate across culture and time. Looking at an ancient Mesopotamian pot in the Louvre I think, I know what you mean. " said Anna GLEESON.

「自多年前起我繪畫了很多被收藏於博物館裡的陶器。我喜歡它們跨文化和跨時間的交流，例如看著羅浮宮中一個古老的美索不達米亞鍋，我便明白箇中的意思。」Anna GLEESON如是說。