Continues until 9 September 2015
A great display of ceramics by young artist / maker Aimee Bollu.
Aimee has undertaken the Cultivated scheme at Unit Twelve gallery in Stafford, the artists’ studios and gallery set up by Jennifer Collier. (Details of the scheme here http://www.unittwelve.co.uk/cultivated.htm)
All the work is for sale. Brindley also have Own Art status, if people are interested in purchasing, but prices for Aimee’s work start at £30.
About Aimee Bollu:
Aimee Bollu is a collector, a gatherer, an arranger of the things people have discarded and forgotten. She seeks out objects that have fallen out of use, out of society, and brings them back to life. Through the creation of hybrid objects, incorporating these found elements and newly made vessel forms, the disregarded items become meaningful once more, and possess a new value.
Bollu has an instinctive approach to design; she scours the streets, engrossed in the process of walking, searching, responding to the detritus of urban life. The found objects, once full of purpose but now detached from their original meaning, take place within her collection and wait. Then comes the act of making: repetitive processes of drawing, mould-making, slip casting, turning, finishing. Simple vessel forms, in a variety of hues and materials, form the support, the framework for the display of the found objects. The found and the made are combined to become a ‘new thing’ with echoes of a past life, and the possibilities of a new one.
These new pieces are intriguing and curious. Unexpected materials, and the ordinary, adorn the almost-bare forms. Rusted and twisted metal emerges from candy-pop porcelain suggesting a handle. Neon twine encircles draped leather, forming a drum-like surface over a curved vessel. An oven knob nestles into the aperture of a turned wooden pot. There is nothing extraneous in the combinations; these items have been seemingly destined to be collaged into their new form.
The emergent collection enables us to see that the stuff of everyday life, once rejected, still has a beauty and a value. Bollu choreographs the viewer’s first encounter with the collection exceptionally. The influence of the wunderkammer on her display is evident, but whereas those early cabinets of curiosity exposed completely novel and unusual things, this display offers a glimpse of something familiar, something already known, with tantalising, uncanny undertones.