Cast Aside: discarding the domestic and the everyday


Taste Contemporary is proud to present Cast Aside: discarding the domestic and the everyday, a group exhibition that showcases the work of artists, whose works in clay, glass and textiles confront and question their relationship to domesticity and function.

Since its establishment in 2012, Taste Contemporary has championed ceramic, glass and textile art. It now explores the work of a group of artists who, while entering into a dialogue with function and the domestic sphere, have chosen to disrupt and subvert it, thus allowing new expressive possibilities to emerge. Ceramic, glass and textile artist’s relationship with function has long since been investigated and questioned. In the 1960’s Rose Slivka famously wrote about a ‘new generation of ceramicists who ‘avoid functional association in their work so that the value of use becomes a secondary or even arbitrary attribute.’ Taste Contemporary has now selected work by a number of contemporary artists, whose practices echo the concerns of their predecessors but who charge their work with a new disruptive energy that casts aside all associations with the domestic and the everyday.

Johannes Nagel’s ceramic objects speak of containment. But, as Glenn Adamson has written ‘he follows his instincts, departing from predictable pot-shapes that could be envisioned in the mind,’ creating objects that ‘sit at the junction between fact and fiction.’ In Patrick Loughran’s sculptural forms we see remnants of the ordinary. But in a desire to manipulate and re-build, they become disrupted and mysterious. In her practice Akiko Hirai creates domestic pieces such as tea bowls however, she has also received international acclaim for her Moon Jars. Her deeply textured and unsettling interpretations have been described by the LOEWE Craft Prize judges as ‘an expressive and energised gestural interpretation of the iconic form’. Martin Neubert’s depicts the human figure in a sensitive manner. Focusing on those on the fringes of society, his figures are often portrayed holding containers and can even sometimes have a functional element. His expressive images of them awaken empathy, but also disturb. Glass artists such as Åsa Jungelius and Fredrik Nielsen challenge existing hierarchies, Zac Weinberg creates glass enclosures to explore the intersection between function and aesthetic, while the work of Per-René Larsen is often based on a distorted view of the vessel form. Textile artist Fern Liberty Kallenbach Campbell uses the familiar landscape of interior spaces to explore issues such as spam and cybersex through the lens of the digital age while Koen Taselaar’s textiles suggest the everyday but in his narrative, works are frequently presented in a dreamlike and unsettling way.

With Heidi Bjørgan, Akiko Hirai, Åsa Jungelius, Fern Liberty Kallenbach, Per René Larsen, Patrick Loughran, Johannes Nagel, Martin Neubert, Fredrik Nielsen, Koen Taselaar, Zac Weinberg.

Exhibition from 15 September to 2 October 2022

42. Usine Kugler – Fonderie Kugler

Taste Contemporary
Rue de la Truite 4
1205 Genève
www.tastecontemporary.com