2021
INTERNATIONAL
CERAMIC SYMPOSIUM

11 October - 5 November, 2021

The International Ceramic Symposium organised by the International Ceramic Studio in collaboration with the Foundation for Contemporary Ceramics (KKA) Hungary and funded by the Hungarian National Cultural Fund (NKA).

 ANTAL KITTI

 Hungary

I am extremely attracted to art and its inexhaustible paths. I’m looking for challenges and unusual things.

At present, I mainly make autonomous ceramic objects, small sculptures and wall sculptures. I also make custom jewellery made of clay. I am close to nature, its respect and love. In their formal construction, my objects are built from the elements of the natural and urban environment and are made in the spirit of sustainability. It also plays a role during the creative process and in the message of the finished objects.

I build my sculptures with expressive movements, while in the case of my jewellery the process of making is calm, but their expressive power lies in their style.

In addition to ceramics, I occasionally paint, especially watercolour or experimentalist acrylic paintings. Experience and experimentation are a continuous part of my creative activity, I get to know different surfaces and forms in order to achieve abstraction.

 DÁLYAY VIRÁG
 Hungary

 FUSZ GYÖRGY
 Hungary

At the centre of Fusz György’s figurative sculpture is the tension between thoughtful introspection and powerful expression. With a presence that can be felt Fusz transmits his inner observations to awaken and provoke. Fusz makes sculptures that give him more freedom in the shaping of the human form with their characteristic, exciting surface gestures but still it is the inner soul that interests him.

 GESZLER MÁRIA
 Hungary

My work is focused on the human figure, in various contexts, such as the instrument of soul, the portrait as a reflection of our everyday life, organic form, as nature itself. I convert the visual and digital worlds by direct screen printing technique to my works, so enhancing the form and expression this way.

Portraits - china portraits - as my diaries - for decades I have experimented to express my own personality in simple, concentrated "minimal art" form. These figures I imagine living in the landscape, hiding in a bush, lying in the grass, standing in water. In the exhibition hall, on plinths, I see a dissonant phenomenon. That's why I tried to put them on ceramic "stones" or to build half of them in stone-forms - so that they may return to nature even in these sterile surroundings.

I am from Eastern Europe, the daughter of a ideological and social experiment gone wrong - socialism. Having graduated at the College of Applied Art's in Budapest, I started to work as designer in a pure, neglected "out of the world" ceramic factory. But what a factory? From this time on I started to feel the smoke of the cooling towers, the lines of the factory's broken windows, the conveyer belts, the women metal-workers with their varicose legs, the electricity centers, the crane-cemetery and the loneliness of the huge, badly lit factory halls. The poles, the bottom of aeroplanes, the sky red from poisonous gas, had a special meaning for me. I started to photograph these impressions and transfered them onto the clay by silkscreen print. I formed and crumpled them together with the material. I was lead by two feelings: adoration and horror. Admiration and appreciation at the sight of human spirit and technique and fear and anxiety at the sight of those huge, isolated, creaking steel plants. What will the future hold?

 VLADIMIR GROH and   YASUYO NISHIDA
 Czech Republic / Japan

Yasuyo Nishida & Vladimir Groh , an artist couple who interpret the beauty of unpretentious practical utensils by combining the texture beauty of porcelain itself with the colour produced by soluble metal oxides.

Yasuyo, from Japan, graduated from the Musashino University of Fine Arts with a professional education background. Vladimir, from the Czech Republic, has extensive exhibition experiences and participation in seminars. He was the president of the Brno Ceramics Association. They started working together in 2005.

Yasuyo and Vladimir have been committed to different decorative techniques, especially in soluble metal salts, an ancient and difficult ceramic decorative technique, and they have become experts in this field. In 2015 they were invited to work on this theme in the artist residency at Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Japan.

The couple's goal in their creation is to dissolve the colourful watercolours into the surface of the original white porcelain and to interpret the gentle and profound beauty in their daily life.

Artists website

 HABER SZILVIA
 Hungary

The patterns of nature can give us a key to understand the rules that determine all the natural processes. These patterns contain the code, which can help us to describe relatively easily quite complicated processes, shapes and figures.

For me the world of fractals is the link to the energy of the universe.

Through fractals I can see the original method of the organic nature: the infinite variety of the self organised power of the primal order.

The biggest part of the familiar world carries the characteristic of fractals.

Fractals are geometric formations in which you can find repetition at any scale.

My goal is to visualise this.

 SUSAN HALLS

 United Kingdom

“My obsession with animals and animal imagery has been more or less constant since my childhood so it is beyond doubt that they should be the dominant subject in my work. It seems right and the most honest creative front available. I do believe that part of my drive to make animals is tied up in the primitive need to possess them – like effigies and totems. In my sculpture I’m trying to create an image which traps a kind of animal truth. Direct representation does not interest me. I strive to create work which reinvents animal form, enhancing the facts without being slavish to mere appearance. Dog, Horse, Bird, Pig, Sheep and Goat are recurring themes.”

Born 1966 in Kent, England, Susan studied studio ceramics at her local art school, the Medway College of Art and Design from 1984-1988. During this time she was awarded a scholarship by the Royal College of Art in London. She graduated MA with distinction in 1990.

After a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada, she established her studio in London, exhibiting widely through the United Kingdom and Europe. Susan also became a visiting lecturer to many colleges and universities including Royal College of Art, Central St. Martin’s, Manchester Art School, The Cardiff Institute and Bath School of Art. Her work is represented in several public collections, including The Sackler Foundation, Victoria and Albert Museum (London) and Stoke-on-Trent Museum and York City Art Gallery.

In 1998 she moved to the USA, setting up her home studios first in Connecticut then Massachusetts. In 2018, Susan returned to her native UK.

Artist website

 JANINA MYRONOVA
 Poland

“My characters display a specific, distorted body perspective. The forms are a bit clunky, chubby, anatomically misshapen, marked with accents which double the characters or hybridize their silhouettes. Each sculpture is a different personality, a personal story, a graphic “novel” featuring my favourite motifs: images of family relationships, parent and child, partners, pets. My emotions are “scratched” into them, with a subtle hint towards humour. Wonder, anger, fear and joy are all present there.”

Janina Myronova was born in the Ukraine and lives and works in Poland. She completed her PhD in ceramics at Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw, Poland in 2019. A multi-award winner,  Janina is  internationally recognised for her bold, sculptural work. She has undertaken residencies and participated in symposia all over the world, including Künstlerhaus Stadttöpferei, Germany, New Taipei Yingge Ceramics Museum in Taiwan and Guldagergaard Denmark. 

A laureate of, among others, the 1st prize in the 5th “Ceramica Multiplex” International Competition, the Varazdin City Museum, Croatia (2016), the 1st degree award of the Mayor of Kielce for her achievements in artistic work and popularisation and protection of culture (2015), Grand Prix of the International Competition, Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk (2012).

Artist website

 NAGY MÁRTA
 Hungary

Contrasts are important in her work. She uses coarse stoneware alongside refined porcelain. The subtle colour combinations are extremely personal, in terms of the colour in combination with the gloss of the porcelain or with the rough skin of stoneware, as well as the visual use of scratches or cracks in the porcelain. She utilises a great diversity of visual means and a very personal perception of nature. Yet the work is a completely own field which has not become lodged in a personal diary note. Her life experiences have been rendered so abstract that everyone can recognise their own version of the story.

Nagy’s work is characterised by the great variety of topic choice. She starts with one motif, works with it for a year or two, then sets it aside in favour of a new topic, on which she conducts intense experiments, only to switch again a while later, or return to an earlier theme, this time emphasising different relationships. Her career resembles a multiple spiral, in which the arcs are predictable to a certain extent, yet often incur a change where it is not apparent until after retrospective analysis from several years’ distance how the change fits organically into the system as a whole.

Kecskeméti Kortárs Művészeti Műhelyek
NEMZETKÖZI KERÁMIA STÚDIÓ

Kecskemét Contemporary Art Studios
INTERNATIONAL CERAMICS STUDIO

Address:

Kápolna u.11,
Kecskemét 6000
Hungary

Phone:
+36 76 486867

Email:

Steve Mattison: icshu@me.com 
Erika Sütő: studiovezeto@kkmm.hu
NKS Office: icshu@t-online.hu

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