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Ceramics & Glass (MA)

Sunyoung Oh

Sunyoung Oh received a BA in Fine Art /painting from Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, South Korea in 2010 and an MA in Fine Art with distinction from Chelsea College of Arts in London in 2016, where she also won the Dean Prize. To broaden her expertise in Ceramic, she embarked on the MA Ceramics & Glass at the Royal College of Art in 2018. Sunyoung exhibits internationally and her work is represented in the museum collections in Korea.


Sunyoung is currently working in both oil painting and ceramic for a upcoming solo exhibition in Seoul. Her next journey will be at Sundaymorning@ekwc residency programme in Netherlands where she will continue to develop her skills in ceramics. She is open to conversations, collaborations and commissions with ceramic companies and museums, as well as for exhibitions and residencies.

Degree Details

School of Arts & Humanities

Ceramics & Glass (MA)
Sunyoung Oh

My practice pursues painterly experimentations through ceramic materiality. I reinterpret decorative patterns and paintings from the classical onto vases, small boxes and plates.


My interest is in the movement of vibrant brushstrokes in landscape painting that capture intangible elements such as wind, fog, storm and air. My approach to atmospheric painting stems from both Turner’s romantic landscapes (19th Century) and Jeong Seon’s Korean traditional painting (18th Century). The similarity of both is their dynamic, energetic and airy expression with minimal brushstrokes in a Zen-like gesture. I see their trees as an alien forest and I reflect their strange and romantic mood on vases forming garniture sets. I unfold the continuity of my atmospheric painting through the symmetrical arrangement of my vases.

 

My painting also recalls Rococo decorative patterns – of flora, foliage, trees and fruits - which I use to render a nostalgic landscape in pastel colours and floating brushstrokes. I translate those decorative patterns into my vocabulary with watercolour on paper before painting on the porcelain surface. Watercolour drawing is significant for me in order to plot colour, tone and composition. I refine the painterly brushstrokes from drawing on paper to painting on my slip cast porcelain forms.

Drawings for <After the feast>  2019
Drawings for <After the feast> 2019 — pencil and watercolour on sketchbook

<After the feast> (2019) is inspired by the Shakespeare play, Midsummer Night’s Dream.

I depict the happenings in the feast in the mysterious forest inhabited by fairies under the moonlight through plates, vases and cutlery. The vase is a metaphoric object to fill a magical juice from a flower, which makes characters in the play fall in love with the wrong partner. The violet colour-gradation of the vase is reminiscent of the flower called love-idleness, which is wild pansy in mythology. The comical disturbance to break the balance of love is illustrated with unstably stacked-plates. Through the installation composed of domestic ceramics a dream time is drawn from imagination towards a rustle of leaves, shades of ancient trees, dappled clouds and a whiff of bowery wilderness in the fairyland.


Fairy:

Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,

Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire,

I do wander every where,



Medium:

glazed porcelain and metal cutlery
Floral Arcadia collection  2020
Floral Arcadia collection 2020
Floral Arcadia Ⅰ  2020  glazed porcelain 25x16cm
Floral Arcadia Ⅰ 2020 glazed porcelain 25x16cm
Floral Arcadia Ⅱ  2020  glazed porcelain 25x17cm
Floral Arcadia Ⅱ 2020 glazed porcelain 25x17cm
Floral Arcadia Ⅲ  2020  glazed porcelain  24x13cm
Floral Arcadia Ⅲ 2020 glazed porcelain 24x13cm

I paint landscape in memory of times and spaces of ruined forests and gardens. The landscape has disappeared and remains as a beautiful place in my memory.


The atmospheric painting was driven by sensory experiences from when I roamed in the foggy wet swamp full of moist green and flower scent. A theatrical illusion stirred by nature is explored by the movement of images formed through runny glaze experimentation, operating between abstract and figurative.


I juxtapose a realistic landscape in nature with a fictional place, reinterpreting the backdrop of forests and gardens from classical paintings to revive their romantic atmosphere. Transforming its traditional composition into lively configuration by vibrant brushstrokes, the fictional landscape is imbued in glaze materiality.


To express a pastoral landscape in a state of memory, I mimic trees and flowers of traditional landscape paintings by old masters such as Turner, Jeong Seon and Fragonard, transforming their compositions into new configurations through my personal visual language.  

Medium:

glazed porcelain

Size:

24x60cm
Shady Glade  2019  glazed porcelain  8.7x6.8x11cm
Shady Glade 2019 glazed porcelain 8.7x6.8x11cm

<Shady Glade> is a re-interpreted miniature in response to a gold box <Snuff Box> in the Wallace Collection, which is decorated with floral and animal motifs. In the process of painting I transform gold scrolls into colourful glaze brushstrokes. Through my practice I intend to represent the original image, and experiment with how the image moves and shifts through the use of glaze fluxes and reactions when fired at high temperatures.

Medium:

glazed porcelain

Size:

8.7x6.8x11cm
The sensuality of trees  (front)  2021
The sensuality of trees (front) 2021
The sensuality of trees  (back)  2021
The sensuality of trees (back) 2021

Garniture

Garniture is a set of ornamental vessels displayed in domestic interiors from the mid-17th Century to early-19th Century in the UK and Europe. It was very fashionable for the wealthy elite and aristocracy to decorate on top of their cabinets, chimneys, mantelpieces, cornices, doorways or on panelling around the room. The earliest vessels were imported Chinese porcelain, painting decorated in pure white and vibrant blue. In 1644, temporarily interrupted imports from China, resulted in a high demand for garnitures in the European market and the discovery of the recipe for porcelain in Germany accelerated independent production of luxurious and sophisticated vessels. Through commissioned vessel collections unified by their design and specific context, garniture reflected personal taste. At the end of its fashion in late 19th Century, vessels were sold and split up. Today, few complete garnitures have survived and are found in historic houses.   

(Referenced from the publication: Garnitures: Vase sets from National Trust Houses, Patricia F. Ferguson, V&A Publishing; London, 2016)


Inspired by Garniture history, my ornamental vase set explores a continuity of the natural landscape, forming a rhythmical arrangement. The vessels in groups expand into a sequence of panoramic landscape.



Trees

My inspiration came from Fragonard’s Rococo painting of massive and growing trees in the forest and garden. Instead of  the main subject of flirtation in his painting ‘The Swing’ and ‘The Progress of Love’ series, I pay more attention to the sensual depiction of nature celebrated in these works.


I describe a placid garden full of wildflowers under the frail azure and imagine that the pastoral landscape spreads out beyond the limited confines of the porcelain surface and through light and shadow in the paintings, the depth of landscape is realised.  


Medium:

glazed porcelain

Size:

19x98cm
Drawings and Designs  for <Fruits & Flora> tableware set
Drawings and Designs for <Fruits & Flora> tableware set — watercolour and ink on paper 2019
Fruits & Flora  2019
Fruits & Flora 2019
Window display in Thomas Goode & Co Ltd. in Bond Street  2019
Window display in Thomas Goode & Co Ltd. in Bond Street 2019
Fruits & Flora  2019
Fruits & Flora 2019

The brief for this commission was to design a tableware set using the expansive archive of decorated objects in the Waddesdon Manor collection. My inspiration came from an 18th-century Roll top desk in Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild’s private sitting room in Waddesdon Manor. The attraction of the desk for me is that its massive cylinder top can be opened and closed revealing inside many images, decorated with inlaid patterns which spring to life when the shelves or drawers open.

For my response, I created different types of patterns, making use of the fact that ceramics are often stored in stacks. When one plate or cup is removed from its stack, another emerges from underneath, revealing a different image.


<Fruits & Flora> - Limited edition bone china tableware collection, shown in Thomas Goode’s Mayfair showroom during London Craft Week 2019.


Available at: https://waddesdon.org.uk/product-category/homeware-and-gifts/page/3/

Medium:

digital print on bone china