North-West Ceramics Foundation Speaker Program

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BNWCF

Relational Ceramics:

North-West Amy Gogarty

Ceramics 7:30 p.m., Thurs., June 12
Foundation Room 245NB, North Building,
Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design

Amy Gogarty has taught Visual Arts History, Theory
and the History of Ceramics; she has published extensively
on issues relating to contemporary art and craft, and has
participated in conferences and symposia relating to craft
issues nationally and internationally.

In her talk, Amy will discuss the main ideas in French
curator Nicholas Bourriaud’s book Relational Aesthetics,
using those ideas to propose a different way to think
about functional ceramics as well as a different way to
think about function in ceramics.

By focusing on what functional ceramics do—generate
social relations; construct and signal identity; connect
individuals and communities to sensual experiences as
opposed to what they look like or how they are made, we
can examine how they perform, by generating new links to

how other forms of relational art perform. The argument
is not that ceramics fits in to Bourriaud’s framework, but
rather that looking at things in this way shows common-
alities and helps to dissolve false binaries, especially
those used by educational institutions and museums
to eliminate ceramics from programming or collections.

The talk will be illustrated with examples of
contemporary functional ceramic works.

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Potters Guild of BC Newsletter - May 2008

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