Excerpt from the press release: Richard Saltoun Gallery presents decentering in Ceramics, a group exhibition curated by Giulia Pollicita that celebrates the symbolic power of ceramics and highlights the medium’s political, social, identitarian and imaginative declinations through the work of eight female artists. The exhibition situates seminal sculptures by Franca Maranò and Nedda Guidi, pioneers in technical and formal experimentation, alongside new work by a younger generation of international artists working with ceramics: Chiara Camoni, Gaia Fugazza, Florence Peake, Raffaela Nardi Rossano, Holly Stevenson and Zoe Williams. Through this intergenerational dialogue, the exhibition reverses the narration of a medium historically relegated to the 'decorative' realm, partially retracing its history and highlighting its potential for freedom.
Holly Stevenson's ceramics have been produced during her artist residency with Laboratorio Piramide in the Bravetta district. Mixing the suggestions of Catholicism that permeate the city of Rome with the daily life of the neighbourhood and its community, her pair of sculptures Priest Beast and Coat Hanger Angel (2022), represent a process of transposition and sublimation of innovation in the wake of tradition, in which conservatism and progressivism coexist. Referencing the abolition of the right to abortion in many American states, the crutch, used in the past for the illegal and often mortal termination of pregnancies, becomes a symbol of the claim of freedom against the oppressive patriarchal power.
The works of Gaia Fugazza, Florence Peake, Holly Stevenson and Zoe Williams were created in Rome in 2022 tas part of Laboratorio Piramide’s residency programme, a project financed by the Lazio region to promote the encounter between contemporary art and craftsmanship, which allowed the artists to work in the historic Bottega Paolelli in the Bravetta district, experimenting with materials, techniques and processes of the Italian tradition.
Installation view of the group exhibition decentering in Ceramics, curated by Giulia Policita for Richard Saltoun Gallery, Rome.
Coat Hanger Angel (2022) Ceramic: Glazed terracotta and gold, 50 x 25 x 16 cm
Splash (2022) Ceramic: Terracotta with crystalline glaze, 17 x 20 x 16 cm
Installation view
Priest Beast (2022) Ceramic: Glazed terracotta with gold, 66.5 x 30 x 10 cm
On the inside you can’t see the structure.
Image: Work in progress at the Paolelli workshop
A text written by the artist Holly Stevenson on the occasion of being a resident in Giulia Policita’s Laboratorio Piramide
Laboratorio Piramide gathered up its name from the tomb of Caio Cestio, a monument found in the zone where the residency was initially envisaged to take place: Here begins a series of mental hurdles without a pyramid in sight. Dreamt up as a cryptic resting place for the rulers of Ancient Egypt the pyramid is an architectural puzzle in which to display and hide treasures, its function is oxymoronic. The phrase ‘tutta casa e chiesa’ (all home and church) used to express a life of female conformity struck me as the very opposite of my new life in the Pyramid’s Laboratory where I make ceramics all day and sleep at the nuns by night, for me it is tutta ceramica e convento. From the studio, where I wrestle with argilla rossa Montelupo, I can see my bedroom window in the Convent and the Sisters now form an important passage in my new world. Suora Anna Magnani voluntarily asserted without art Rome would not exist and so it was gently understood and accepted that I was a member of the congregation of the Church of Art.
The zigzagging slopes between clay and convent, Paoelli and the Sisters, map the paths of Laboratorio Piramide’s chambers. The King’s chamber namely Elio’s kilns being at the top of the process. This is not a residency but a series of connections that must be made and in the doing so the art will get made. I wanted to ask the Sister’s their opinions on the recent overturning of Roe versus Wade, or rather their opinions on prenatal life and the feminist context. I didn’t because it felt like just as with the ancient Egyptians their opinion on the afterlife was clear cut. A ubiquitous Madonna hung in my bedroom and ‘Breakfast Jesus’ watched over my first coffee of the day. I received my answer symbolically as there was not a metal coat hanger insight in my convent wardrobe yet an abundance of them had been left tucked behind a wooden panel in the studio and the form of l’angelo degli porta abiti’ arrived. Let me be clear I am not advocating the use of metal coat hangers for medical tools. But, in today’s war on female bodies the coat hanger stands as a symbol of what happens if the right to abortion is taken away, it is a sick symbol of freedom in the face of the loss of liberty.
The Laboratory proved to be as understandable as a series of sessions with the psychoanalyst, chambers of associations, all wings, wires and prayers. I coiled and slabbed the silken red clay as the trains of forms with their bodily concerns emerged, a series of little cyclops faces wind there short sighted way around the coat hanger shapes, a beastly priest with a mollusc for an eye, the angel and an ode to Sigmund Freud’s favourite ashtray. There is no sorting out the fact from the fiction in the Pyramid, it is about the freedom to triangulate fact + fiction to make art. Real stories sculpted into serious meaning because when you are on the inside you can’t see the structure.