Ceramics & Glass (MA)
About
The materials of ceramic and glass give us a powerful and evocative insight into our connections with things and the intimate lives we live with objects. From the ground we tread, to the buildings we inhabit, to the domestic artefacts and vessels that allow us to consume and go about our daily lives. From the strengthened glass touch screen that allows us to network with friends and families on other sides of the world to the potentiality of ceramic materials in memory systems of future Artificial Intelligence. Ceramics and glass are both our histories and past and our futures. In the work of our 2022 graduates this bi-directional focus of potential and history is united with the tacit, embodied and urgent forms of knowledge production created by making.
What you will see from this online showcase is the importance of ceramics and glass as media for design, artistic possibility where making and narrativity are essential to the creation of meaning. That artists thrive through these materials, and that audiences connect with the artistic intentions laced into these materials is not coincidence but is built on this symbiosis between artist and material.
In this year’s graduate works you can see multiple important themes emerge: those of the body (in a post-human world), absurdity, ecologies and sustainability, our inhabiting of the build environment, speculative narrative possibilities, transformation/metamorphosis, intuition and playfulness, alchemic material possibilities, autobiographical methods of dealing with trauma and the possibilities of artefacts to relay important socio-political narrative.
This is a space where making, thinking and materials combine to define new visual languages and our understanding of the world around us. We are excited to welcome you to encounter the dynamic practices of our graduates of 2022.
Jonathan Boyd
(Head of Programme, Applied Arts)
Instagram: @rcaceramicsandglass