Sculpture, Object, Decorative Craft
During the Henry Moore Institute Fellowship 2012 my research centred on the relationship between artist, object, design and the interior. This investigation spans the twentieth and early twenty-first century, and looks at the contributions of both individual artists and artists’ collective companies to decorative and functional household wares.
Positioning the home as commissioner, not subject, my research is an investigation into artists’ works that traverse the fault line, and occasionally attempt to dismantle the hierarchies between applied and fine art. It traces an alternative and eclectic form of modernism through examples of architecture and interiors, for example those created by Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Roger Fry and Wyndham Lewis, and utilitarian ceramics, furniture and lighting.
This history is commonly overshadowed and outcast by the International Style, which continues to inform and dominate the theoretical and aesthetic aspects of solo and collaborative practices. Open-ended and extensive, this research has so far included the work of Jean Arp, Asger Jorn, Nicola L, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Richard Tuttle and Franz West, as well as the output of art collectives and artists’ companies such as The Omega Workshop, Rebel Arts Centre, Hammer Prints Ltd and Das Neue Leben.
This research directly feeds into the work of The Grantchester Pottery, a decorative arts company that takes as its historical precedent Roger Fry’s Omega Workshops. Set up with Phil Root in 2011, our forthcoming projects include exhibitions at David Dale, Glasgow in May and ICA, London in June.