Stockroom Kyneton, ceramic gallery
11 November / 03 December 2017

ANDREI DAVIDOFF
The Surinam Toad
solo show

‘Persikov spent the rest of his time at his place on Prechistenka, covered with a plaid shawl, lying on the sofa in his room, which was crammed to the ceiling with books, coughing, staring into the open maw of the fiery stove which Marya Stepanovna fed gilded chairs, and thinking about the Surinam toad.’

• The Fatal Eggs, M.A Bulgakov

With this new body of work Davidoff presents a series of ceramic vessel - like forms which attempt to evolve from mundane decorative ware to objects of ominous intent. Utilising images and decorative motives found in eastern European mythology combined with popular imagery of momento mori Davidoff creates forms, which whilst holding something of a narrative, contain no happy ending.

Davidoff cherry picks forms and iconography from the histories and theories of studio pottery in order to query the nature of assigned value within the discipline. Forms are borrowed from sources such as Korean storage jars and Japanese tea vessels. Surface decoration is gleaned from an array of references, from slip decoration of North Carolina, through to instructional drawings from a seminal text by the founder of the English/Japanese pottery tradition - Bernard Leach. The juxtaposition of images and forms from various cultures - an allusion to both the use and value of the ceramic vessel within human history, as well as the symbolism that they contain.

In addition to these historic references, Davidoff draws on the everyday. Commercially produced ceramics decals featuring icons and signs litter the surfaces in an arbitrary fashion: biohazard signs and atomic icons, skull and cross bones and cassette players–symbols of our urban world.

These elements are conflated with complex tactile surfaces, bubbled and crazed, achieved through experimental production processes and multiple firings (six –seven times). Dripping rivulets of traditional stoneware and commercial earthenware glazes, are combined with smelted bottle glass and finished with gold lustre, decals and on-glaze enamels.

Through drawing on the diverse cross-cultural histories of the form and its representation, his work investigates the tension between the objects’ high art cultural value and its social value as a utilitarian object.

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