KAREN DOWNING

摘要

Have you ever sat on a stony beach and arranged your favourite stones in order of size in a line growing ever larger or stacked them in a carefully considered pyramid? What do you do with the ones that are not quite the right size or shape to fit in the stack? Karen Downing asked herself such questions when she put forward her proposal for the revolving arts project in the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. Her Van de Laan series tries to answer the question. While watching the stone grading machine sort the stones by size at his grandfather's quarry, Hans Van de Laan asked the same question. What happens to the ones that are in-between sizes? When do you need a particular object of a particular size to address function? Downing's flat porcelain vessels stacked and carefully graded in proportional systems speak of purposeful function, but the 'left-overs' that are not quite the right size - too wide, tall, wobbly - are left unstacked to show the randomness of such collections.