Antonio Fois

In ceramics the necessity of confronting yourself, as a maker, with the physicality of the means is inescapable. Gravity is a force that must be considered while conceiving a piece. Consequently, is rather natural to apply already tested strategies to achieve the result envisaged.

Quite easily the experience acquired becomes a habit that helps to shortens the time in the making and helps to have quite functioning results. Equally, it contains and reiterates preconceptions and pre-ordered results.

Wanting to personally discover my own bias and presumptions I started questioning my methodology. I would usually make a very detailed plan and then I would eventually reach that shape. With this project, I have been trying to deceive my brain and instead of reproducing what I have been doing for almost a decade, I am building objects in a manner based on improvisation, on a step-by-step decision-making process.

I am also challenging the aesthetical expectations which I reckon were strongly influenced by the visual language I have embedded through my experience.

The result of this experiment led me to produce an undefinable shape that triggered the interpretation of the viewers, questioning the perception and evoking a sense of displacement/uncanny.

This project considers time from a subjective perspective, exploring its duality: the infinite time, the potential, and the time being, the actual - and the possibility to initiate a dialogue between these two aspects.

I’ve experienced decay and transition processes by combining layers of different materials in the ceramic body, as a series of strata and on the surface.

Emulating sedimentation and erosion I’ve added different clays and slips to create a shapeless mass which I’ve later defined looking at totemic forms inspired by ancient Sardinian marble statues the Giants of Mont’e Prama.

I’ve been experimenting with engobes and glazes to create my own material language, developed from a selected palette that has informed my visual research from Pompei frescos to Francis Bacon painting.

A speculative installation considers the possibility of arranging a circle of monoliths where, without hierarchies, every single piece expresses its own identity, while contributing to the dialogues ignited by the position. The time is shaped by the natural light as a sundial.

Questioning the collections became very relevant in recent times. It has been a great opportunity to investigate the role that an object might fulfil and how it can change in relation to the context.

I’ve been looking closely at a Chinese ewer from the Shandong province made in 2500 BC, part of the V&A museum collection. The Shandong region at that time was technologically exceptionally advanced. The first yet Chinese pictograms have been found in that area. Acknowledging that in Asia calligraphy is the archetype of any kind of art, I was fascinated by Chinese writing and how it has evolved in time.

One of the oldest pictograms depicting “Water” reminds surprisingly to the shape of the ewer, which is an epitome for teapots, a traditional model amazingly reproduced for centuries through China and the rest of the continent.

I wanted to respond by making a piece that would preserve the ostensible relation between the written sign and the object, the representation of the substance and the container.

水 is a metonymy that questions the perceived hierarchies interrogating what should be elevated or considered higher, enhancing the significance of water in contemporary societies.

Symbiosis is an ongoing material led process project which investigates the interrelation between ceramics and glass in assorted forms.

Blowing, slumping and casting are techniques that I am combining and adapting to create complementary objects both in glass and ceramics.

I had the great opportunity to do a weekly residency at the Glass Foundry in Stroud where I experimented with these processes in-depth to create shapes that visually express the idea of interdependence.

The outcomes are not exactly predictable considering that the two materials behave in quite different ways, not naturally compatible, which is a challenge I am embracing. Part of the shaping is related to the heat in the kiln which conceptually, takes a good part of the agency and creates the space for a new aesthetic.

Learning new drawing methods to free the process from rational control made me discover an interesting connotation of the line. As part of the inquiry about the liminal space between shape and surface, I translated the two-dimensional drawn line into a 3D object both in metal wire and in clay.

The pandemic brought us in a condition where priorities have been shuffled. The notion of value and in particular the value of life has appeared to be defined by demographics. I have chosen to reinterpret the one pound coin which represents the gauge of value, by assembling available non-precious materials to highlight the potential inherent in every kind of resource.