Ceramic, painted and polished.  Dimensions: H76cm, approx 5.5 x 4.25m overall                                                                          Private Collection, courtesy Barrett Marsden Gallery

Artist's Statement:

"...if there were only water amongst the rock"- The Waste Land  T S Eliot

For those of us making a certain type of ceramic vessel, one of the central metaphors in such work, which is perhaps too obvious to state, is that these vessels are empty.  It is a powerful metaphor - to produce a body of work about containment which is intended to remain resolutely empty.  

They are empty because they refer to traditions of use that are almost lost: ceremonies or rituals, involving vessels, which were performed in common, such as baptism, anointment, invocation, blessing...where man and the material world fused.  

Perhaps these empty objects do have some function.  In a world dematerialising into an anti-physical one of text and images, of speed and noise, they sit heavy, thick and still.  Material trying to be as palpable as it can, reproaching a world going virtual.   

 
Notes accompanying Jerwood Prize 2001

Nicholas Rena makes powerful, heavy vessels.  Their walls are thick with definite flat rims and they are precisely finished, then coloured in an unorthodox manner - either softly stained with coloured inks or repeatedly painted. He works in clay because it is both 'precise and sensual'.  At school he was taught ceramics by the highly regarded artist Gordon Baldwin, who was himself short-listed for the Jerwood prize in 1995.  Disillusioned with architecture as a career, Rena returned to work with clay and studied at the Royal College of Art.  The work in the Jerwood 2001 introduced new elements.  .  Mask pieces extend earlier jug forms; by removing parts of the whole, he considers ideas of protection or support.   

Why clay?  Clay provides the opportunity to work with space, like architecture, but it allows artists to have their own voice.  He likes the freedom to think for himself and look at the world in his own way.  Within this comparative freedom he has chosen to deal with the issues of ceramic tradition.  'It provides a boundary to bounce off.'  However his method of colouring the work departs from tradition.  The slow process appeals to him: he likes the slow pace - and unlike firing what you see is what you get.'

Influences: Rothko and Matisse for colour.  Much of my inspiration comes from literature.  In the work are the colours of the night-time sky, American colour-field painting, and the simplicity of form associated with early once-fired ceramics.  Each piece takes these influences, striving for the serenity of solitude or contentment.  To that extent, they are quiet statements of the possibility of personal peace.

Current issues: Appetite.  People making big empty things are dealing with hunger, insatiability.  More specifically for him, 'the ritual vessels refer to hunger on a profound level.' The pieces draw on the kind of experience felt in church, shapes are not directly related to , but draw from such things as church fonts.  he mentions that today there are fewer and fewer public rituals using vessels, eg. coronations, blessings of crowds.  In talking about his piece Egyptian Eye, he uses the phrase 'the hunger of the gaze'.  

On completing the work: 'it is finished when it is as taut and right as possible...when it has a perfect physique...the sensual aspect is vital.'

 

Below: Nicholas Rena at his studio, Palace Wharf