Ceramicist Amy Jayne Hughes uses handbuilding techniques to bridge gaps between past and present ceramic traditions. CR’s Annie Le Santo spoke to her to learn more.
Vogue Turkey | Matt Smith
Vogue Turkey | March 3, 2021
Collect Art Fair 2021
This February Cynthia Corbett Gallery is inviting you behind the scenes of Cynthia Corbett’s Wimbledon home to virtually enjoy our Collect 2021 curation. The Gallery is particularly fortunate as our model was to always involve Wimbledon HQ and enhance our international presence with appearance at venues and spaces fitting our programming and ethos. For Collect 2021 we are recreating what we would have physically shown at our booth at the Fair – in our Home Gallery space in a historic former Victorian convent.
For this outstanding edition of Collect, Cynthia Corbett Gallery is showcasing the artworks of five artists, who create multifaceted narratives while also celebrating materiality. The following three artists, while excelling in their conceptuality, are fascinated with the physical work itself:
· Canadian Christopher Riggio’s vessels, almost art-deco in format, are created with ceramics and glass, yet super-polished like a slab of Carrara marble;
· Spanish Albert Montserrat looks back at the ancient history of Korean moon jars – and takes advantage of the most exquisite technical advancements, using them for his stunning glazes. His work mesmerises with the marriage of the old and new;
· British Amy Hughes’s practice is both fuelled by and symbolic of the highly prestigious Porcelain wares produced at the Royal Sevres Factory in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Hughes’ works reference and pay homage to the originals, but are created with a freer approach, giving them a new lease of life.
Gallery-represented and Young Master Award winner Matt Smith is a true Renaissance artist. Textile embroiderer, ceramicist, art historian, curator, professor of arts: his mission is joining the antique and contemporary while rethinking the ways of what museums collect. His commentary is always infused with social and political mores in both a witty yet serious manner.
American Klari Reis has invented her own medium, using epoxy polymer (a form of liquid plastic) with many added ingredients including pure pigment, acrylic and secrets. Reis’s design is almost otherworldly, her colours unique and her patterns inventive. Her artwork is both object and fine art and she is at the forefront of innovative use of art resources.
Each of these artists have had serious recognition by private and public collections including the V&A, Google, Microsoft, Design Museum Trustee Davina Mallinckrodt and Edmund de Waal.
Virtual viewings over Zoom, Skype, WhatsApp or FaceTime are available by request via info@thecynthiacorbettgallery.com.
FINANCIAL TIMES | HIGHLIGHTS FROM COLLECT CRAFT FAIR’S ONLINE DEBUT WITH ARTSY
MATT SMITH (BRITISH)
After Reynolds, 2020
Reworked Textile with Wool
Amy Hughes interviewed by Preston Fitzgerald
ALBERT MONTSERRAT ADDED TO THE PERMANENT COLLECTION OF THE BARCELONA DESIGN MUSEUM
“Green Urani Jar” by Albert Montserrat, has been added to the permanent collection of the Barcelona Design Museum.
In a meeting with Montserrat, Pilar Vélez, Barcelona’s Design Museum director, and Isabel Fernández, curator of the museum, decided “Green Urani Jar” will be part of the collection.
Montserrat’s works rose the interest of the public after wining the Ceramics Biennial of Barcelona “Angelina Alós” 2018. This ceramic work was decided to be added to the collection due to“ the highly technical excellence in the processes used on the making of the work as well as the extraordinary skills of the glaze technology and ceramic knowledge.” Jury of the Ceramics Biennial Barcelona “Angelina Alós” 2018
GLAZE | Albert Montserrat Viewing Room
Cynthia Corbett in conversation with Dutch photographer Isabelle van Zeijl
MAKING SPACE | CHRISTOPHER RIGGIO
M A K I N G S P A C E
AN EXHIBITION HOSTED BY EDMUND DE WAAL
"Chris Riggio has a particular attentiveness to the world. He is
an urban mudlarker, a finder of abandoned treasures on the streets of the city. He finds eighteenth-century prints, porcelain teapots, silver cutlery, a Chinese Zhong. The ragpicker, said Walter Benjamin, always has one eye on the gutter, able to see poetic possibilities in the discarded. And this is a start, a mode of enquiry about the world. Chris takes things apart with his eye and then with his hands, technics and poetics meshing together."
MATT SMITH: 2020 INSTALIVE WITH THE ARTIST
Wednesday, 7th October
6pm BST / 1pm EST / 10am PST
At @cynthiacorbettgallery
W are pleased to announce that in celebration of London Craft Week and Frieze Week this coming Wednesday, 7th October, at 6pm BST I will host an InstaLive socially distanced tour of Matt Smith: 2020 exhibition, led by contemporary ceramics artist and curator Matt Smithhimself! I am very much looking forward to meeting with Matt and talking to him about his practice, his first major retrospective and his sources of inspiration in these interesting times. You will be able to see us talk and discuss the many artworks in the exhibition joining the conversation in the gallery Instagram here: @cynthiacorbettgallery.
This art week is very special for the gallery, as one year ago was the 10th Anniversary of our not-for-profit initiative Young Masters Art Prize. It is even more special as in 2014 Matt Smith won the inaugural Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize.
Today's stunning public exhibition hosted at 99 Bishopsgate, London, until 9th November 2020, was made possible by Brookfield Properties and the Crafts Council. You will have a rare chance to view a collection of works from Matt Smith's archive.This marks the first time different series by the artist, represented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery, have been brought together in one exhibition.
Matt Smith is well known for his site-specific work in museums, galleries and historic houses. After retraining in ceramics, his work as an artist has often taken the form of hybrid artist/curator, exploring how cultural organisations operate using techniques of institutional critique and artist intervention. Of particular interest to him is how museums can be reframed from alternative perspectives.
Earlier this year Matt Smith won the inaugural Brookfield Properties Crafts Council Collection Award 2020.