Forms Most Beautiful

Plymouth Museum and Art Gallery

21 Jan - 21 April 2012

Curator:Jan Freedman

In partnership with:

Plymouth University
Marine Biological Association
Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science
National Marine Aquarium
Plymouth Marine Laboratory
Plymouth Marine Sciences Partnership
The Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons
The Museums Association
Esmée Fairbairn Foundation

 

…from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Charles Darwin, 1859
 

In a collaboration with the curatorial team at Plymouth Museum and Art Gallery, recent work can be currently seen in the exhibition 'Forms Most Beautiful'. Situated within a natural historical context the works project beyond notions of biology, exploring the co-existence of the alien and the familiar. Juxtaposed between the illustrative works of C19th biologist Ernst Haeckel and marine specimens, a trajectory is drawn from empirical representation towards idealised reification. A process that looks at the relationship between paradigm and observed experience materialised in ceramic pieces of a fantastically intricate architecture. The tension between the durability of fired clay and fragility of construction can be looked on as a metaphor for life. Formal elements can be traced back to Goethe's seminal archetypal modellling, Urpflanze. The works foster a spectrum of interpretation that constantly repositions them in relation to their surroundings.