Clay Hammer

press release

For immediate release

The two-month-long Ceramic Residency of Natalia Laluq at RKG, through stages of clay working - drying - firing, reaches its culmination this September. RKG becomes a backdrop of celebration. The Ceramic Residency has been an ongoing demonstration of the studio experience. The  process of working, for the visitors, was part of the show. The exhibition work has been created using clay, pottery wheel, and kiln. 

Clay Hammer is a concept, conceived and executed within certain requirements:  First, conditioning in clay work; second, pacing the flow of work by keeping a sense of humour and of the mundane informing the work; third, the day of judgement - firing - brings us the Clay Hammer.  

Natalia’s clay work reveals processes of thinking, improvising, observing, recalling and revising from memory, use of gesture both rapid and considered with thin wire or wheel, which speaks of an embodied artistic quest…. The tracing wire creates an eloquent  texture. Tactile and gestural qualities of Laluq’s clay works, and their expressive power,  become aspects that also reveal in arresting ways. Natalia Laluq’s low key approach is present in her Clay Hammer.

The show is an invitation to the familiar, with a sense of depth in both experience and practice, open to the unfamiliar. We thank the artist Natalia Laluq for giving us the unique opportunity at RKG for sharing her journey of the Clay Hammer

 

Statement for the Clay Hammer show in RKG

by the artist Natalia Laluq.

I have been working with clay for a long time, almost as long as the clay has worked with me. As long as we work together, learn and sometimes get into that relaxed collaborative mode, where each other’s meeting point becomes the ceramic. However, this harmonious state changes to separation through life’s circumstances. Nostalgic longing towards each other and the long-dreamed-of meetings end in quarrel and conflict. Our expectations of meeting the same material end in communication with an alienated substance. I accept the punishment, hoping for new harmonious relationships with clay in future. 

Presented is the result of one such “meeting-your-old-friend-you-almost-forgot-what-he-looks-like” session.

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