Artist in Residence - Jingdezhen, China

Last September and October I have participated in a 7 weeks residency programme in Jingdezhen, China, ‘the porcelain capital of the world’. While experimenting with porcelain, may new works have been made.

BEAUTY OF DEFORMATION
Imperfect porcelain pieces are normally thrown away. Some beautiful old examples have been found both in Jingdezhen and Delft of stacks of bowls and saggars that have been melted together and deformed during the firing process. My goal was to show the beauty of these mistakes and create more or less controlled ‘mistakes’; by melting pieces together or to make them deform on purpose. The pieces show the transformation process of the porcelain in the kiln.

STACKING AND PACKING
I observed that many of the imperial pieces consist of stacked shapes. Using existing shapes from Jingdezhen, I have made my own version of several imperial pieces. Taking inspiration from Jingdezhen, I have also used traditional packaging techniques of porcelain to hold stacks together.