HOME FOR ORPHANED POTS

© Alan Kane. All rights reserved, DACS 2023.

HOME FOR ORPHANED DISHES 2011

Alan Kane (1961 – )

Details

Dimension
VARIABLE
Media
300 1970S CERAMICS, 150 DONATED CERAMICS FROM THE WHITECHAPEL EXHIBITION 2011
Accession number
P8367

Summary

British artist Alan Kane presents a floor-to-ceiling display of a forgotten moment of popular craft revival. The 1960s and '70s saw a resurgence in traditional wheel-thrown, glazed stone and slipware pottery in the typical rustic earthy tones of that era. Patted, squeezed, pinched and pressed, these frank ceramics became a fashionable alternative to mass production and modernist design.

Once treasured, these pots are now often considered ugly or plain and dwell in the back of kitchen cupboards and in charity shops. Blurring the boundary between the artist and the viewer, Kane encourages his audience to co-create by donating their own unwanted ceramics to his installation, and consequently gift items to the British Council Collection itself.

The work was originally conceived for the Whitechapel Gallery and exhibited there in 2011, before being acquired by the British Council Collection. 

See the new Orphans donated in Japan here: http://home-for-orphaned-dishes-jp.tumblr.com/

Glossary

  • Ceramics

    Clay based products produced from non-metallic material and fired at high temperature. The term covers all objects made of fired clay, including earthenware, porcelain, stoneware and terra cotta.

  • Craft

    The creation of handmade objects intended to be both useful and decorative.

  • Design

    The arrangement of elements or details in an artefact or a work of art.

  • Installation

    An artwork comprised of many and various elements of miscellaneous materials (see mixed media), light and sound, which is conceived for and occupies an entire space, gallery or site. The viewer can often enter or walk around the installation. Installations may only exist as long as they are installed, but can be re-created in different sites. Installation art emerged in the 1960s out of Environmental Art (works of art which are three-dimensional environments), but it was not until the 1970s that the term came into common use and not until the late 1980s that artists started to specialise in this kind of work, creating a genre of ‘Installation Art’. The term can also be applied to the arrangement of selected art works in an exhibition.