A Melancholy Beauty

摘要

Over the past ten years Claire Curneen has established a reputation for figurative work in contemporary ceramics, a growing and particularly dynamic area. While the depiction of the figure has a long and noble tradition, it has a relatively short one in the history of studio practice. Curneen's signature piece, a white porcelain standing figure of indeterminate sex, has become the starting point for her most recent areas of enquiry.A typical figure stands fifty or sixty centimetres tall, including its small base, a size that is both intimate and monumental. Constructed from small porcelain slabs, pressed into the maker's palm and then joined together, the figure is made from the feet upwards and then down to the tips of the fingers. There is little attempt at direct anatomical detail, except in the features of the face and hands. Modelled with great care, the hands are proportionally oversized; they seem to hold much of the power of the piece and are a key to its reading. They imply the figure's delight in its own manufacture, in the qualities of clay formed in the hand and left with the detailed palm print. Through their size and expressive modelling they suggest the potential for creative action and interaction, but as they hover close to the figure's sides or have, at most, a tentative gesture, they seem to capture a moment between decision and action. We are left with a potential rather than an explicit meaning, provoking an interrogation of what such a gesture might indicate.