(click image for more details)Fluffy, 2006
clay and earthenware crackle glaze
57cm x 30cm x 41cm
Auburge, 2006
30cm x 60cm x 25cm
The ceramic forms of James Evans are intended to give pleasure – bulbously organic they echo bodily parts both in shape and often colour. The pieces are finished with a combination of glazes and lustre that exaggerate their fluidity. Sometimes Evans uses terra sigillata – clay mixed as a very thin liquid slip and settled to separate out only the finest particles can then be polished to achieve a shine from a smooth silky luster to a high gloss – which lends them a soft, fleshy malleable surface in contrasts with their actual fragility.
The inspiration for the work comes from a multitude of sources that Evans has collected either mentally or physically and are employed either directly or filtered through memory.
Though suggestive in appearance, the work never tips over into pure ribaldry, the anatomical references retaining an element of ambiguity. These evocative shapes are undoubtedly familiar but could equally be derived from geological forms as from human ones and maybe it is just the viewer's mind that reads them as otherwise. Further to this duality, the work is positioned somewhere between the tradition definitions of 'craft' and 'art'. It is in this in-between space that the pleasure is to be found.
Paul Stone, 2008
find out more about this artist
find out more about Paul Stone
