The Politics of Exclusion

The Ceramics Bienniale thar has taken
place for the last sixteen years in Trois-
Rivieres, Quebec is THE most important
national Ceramics exhibition. The
Biennale is, in my opinion, a very important
event, since ic cakes the pulse (yes, ir is still
alive) of che clay field with regularity. Also,
due to the fact that ceramics is largely
ignored by che art world and irs insticucions,
it remains one of the few places where one
can actually be engaged, challenged and
confronted wich che current scene. Ar: you
aware that the National Gallery of Canada,
despite che face thar it has numerous
historical decorative art objects in its
collection, has an official policy mot to
acquire or exhibit contemporary crafts!
One example, among many.

Ower the years the Biennale has had iss
problems, its critics and its detractors, but it
has had supporters as well and has always
been, all things considered, an overall
success. OF course, especially with che first
installments, the results were very mixed
and the selection offered was hardly
cohesive (even incoherent at times), Yet
this may be the very nature of the
discipline, with its amazing richness and
wariecy, its very wide scope, from funcrion
to decoration, from representation te
sculptural installations, from abstraction to
realism, from domestic to architectural,
from cute or beautiful no sophisticated and,
often, willfully ugly. A ceramic show is, by
definition, almost bound oo be a
hodgepodge of all these things. Some
people don't like char. Maybe they
shouldn't be organizing ceramics shows!

For the last exhibition, che organizers
decided ta change the format and restrict
the range of possibilities. The work HAD
to be self-supporning, which | incerpreced as
meaning that it had to be either mounted
om the wall or placed on che floor, It was
possible co use a shelf or a stand, but this
had to be integrated with the piece and be a
mere prop, What it meanc is that ic had to
be SCULPTURE. Whar ir also meanc was
that roughly 90% of che work in previous
Biennales (and 90% of che ceramics work
made in Canada today) became
unacceptable! Just imagine if the only
National Photography show limited itself
year after year to large format portraits.
Only within ceramics is such a thing

posible; anywhere else there would be an
uproar.

1 was greacly worried and wrote a beter to
the organizers, asking them if the next time
a similar restriction would apply, but in
another direction, say exclusively functional
pottery, or decorative figurines... Yer | also
thought that the idea was worth a try and,
since | was invited to participate, | made a
wall piece and sent ic. [| was careful co
follow the restrictive guidelines closely, but
1 made a racher “in your face” piece that
would, 1 guess, probably have been refected
if wasn't for the fact chat chey had invited
me to participace. As well, [ know thar
some other previous winners, whose work
didn't quite fit the imposed formar, decided
not ta participace or sent work thar was
rejected because it wasn’t “self-supporting”
(after being invited, no less).

1 didn’t see the show in Trois-Rivieres, but
saw ic at its last cour venue in che
Richmond Arc Centre. | must admit that
the work presented had a more cohesive
visual effect and che “*inseallation” formar
made the work accessible and acceptable ta
che arc cognescenti. The organizers also
invited few “real” artists co particpate no
dowbt so that they could show us the way
and elevace the standard of che show by
their mere presence. Nometheless, on the
whole it looked like a rather weak and oh!

so conventional are show.

Enough for history, back oo che presenc.
The organizers have decided to repeat the
experience this year and present the same
restrictions, somewhat more specific and
less ambiguous than the lasc ime. The
work must be a large scale sculpture or an
installation. [s this going to be the formar
for ever? Len'c here danger chat chis will
create as much predictability and boredom
as the previous model? Do we need
ceramics shows at all if the best they can do
is look exactly like all the other shows
around? You can say what you want about
the old Biennales, at least they presented
works chat were corally impossible to see
anywhere else.

[ torally understand that there was a need
for achange. Many options are possible
and here are my suggestions: collaboracions
with architects, collaborations with
designers, or between artists of various
disciplines, various there shows around
diverse issues, the body and the figure,
nature, sexuality and politics, historical

page 5

precedents and historicism, deconstruction,
fragmentation and recontextualisacion,
domesticity and rituals, decoration and
decorative objects, concepts or
contairument, the figurine and genre scenes,
Miniatures, tiles and bricks, sanitary wares,
trape-l'geil, narratives, oF a show around
functional poctery, etc, ett... So many
possibilittes, most of which were offered by
the open formar. Or invite a curator to
select and structure a show as he or she
pleases, Ic then becomes the sole
responsibility of the individual co justify the
choices made. Year after pear, with a new
curator, the show would change its format
and contenc. It could also serve to educate
the curators, critics and historians who
need it badly, and, through rigorous and.
articulated analysis, create an intelligent
debate around che choices made and the

issies raised.

But | beliewe chis is a lost battle. The only
way to play along is no have some semantic
fun. | propose chat we all send anything we
wish and call ica sculprure. That is what
sculptors do. It is art if you say ic is, itis
sculpture if you say so. Since Marcel
Duchamp, the most famous ceramic artist
with his “Founrain” urinal, nobody will dare
to challenge the possibility of any object
whatsoever not co be asculprure! If you are
worried it wall be tom small, say it is
sculpture for ants, or for people with small
brains (they are everywhere these days),
Isn't a large teapot, a large cup or a large
place labelled as sculpture, a large sculpture?

Whar does LARGE mean ampway, for
whom, according ta whom? Call it an
installation. Nobody will dare to challenge
you. Send a cup and provide a mecal hook
ot a wooden peg (making the piece muld-
media) and ask thar it be mounted on the
wall as an installation. Send two seal
objects and request that they be exhibited
100 feet apart, to create a large inscallarion.
Whar is an installation anyway! Could it be
defined as various ohvects of interventions
organized within a specific space and their
interrelation? [s a teaset on a tray an
installation? Why net!

Is the ritual of serving tea a performance!
Yes. Is a bathroom an installation? Of
course. “Are the decorative tiled surfaces of

Islamic mosques tnstallaions? Yes again.

Continued on Page 6