Melting Ceramics

When dropping a ceramic plate or cup we've all braced for the familiar sound of impact as the object explodes into a multitude of sharp fragments on the kitchen floor. Artist Livia Marin imagines a wholly different demise for ceramic bowls, cups and tea pots in this series of work titled Nomad Patterns.Inexplicably, each piece seems to melt onto a surface while strangely retaining its original printed pattern. The designs are actually a Willow Pattern motif, a pastiche of Chinese landscape decoration created by an English man in the 1790s “as if” it were Chinese. She adds via email that the objects “appear as staged somehow indeterminately between something that is about to collapse or has just been restored; between things that have been invested with the attention of care but also have the appearance of a ruin.” The 32 objects were on view at Eagle Gallery in London in 2012.

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