Minimalist or Maximalist?

×

Expand

Sandra Ledingham, "Turquoise Curved Plane," no date

clay and glaze, 15" x 14" x 12" (courtesy Winchester Galleries, Victoria)

Minimalist or maximalist? An exhibition at Winchester Galleries in Victoria bridges both sides of this divide with striking ceramic sculptures by two artists. Featured until July 28 are cerebral yet sensuously curved planar works by Sandra Ledingham, a Saskatoon artist, as well as emotive pieces that flirt riotously with chaos by Toronto-based Susan Collett. 

Some of Collett’s pieces look like clumps of uprooted vegetation. Georgian, in particular, makes me think of wave-embroiled seaweed wrenched free from its tether. Her organic forms can feel encrusted and crumbling or dank and windswept, seemingly tested by natural forces. Hand built using paper clay over nichrome wire, they are created layer by layer, and fired multiple times. Variously glazed and sometimes sporting silver or mother-of-pearl tear-drop orbs, their allure is not one of fixity, but mutability.

“The sculptures form uprooted clusters,” Collett writes in her artist statement, “an analogy that life is cumulative and never quite finished, unable to be ordered or tidied, messy and chaotic, but not without beauty.” Amen to that.

×

1 of 2

Expand

Susan Collett, “Georgian,” 2020

paper clay, glaze and black porcelain base, 12″ x 10″ x 9″(courtesy Winchester Galleries, Victoria)

×

2 of 2

Expand

Susan Collett, “Florid,” 2019

paper clay, underglaze, glaze and handmade cement base, 8″ x 9″ x 9″ (courtesy Winchester Galleries, Victoria)

Prev

Next

What a contrast to Ledingham’s serene works, which make me think of Richard Serra and his large-scale steel walls. But Ledingham’s pieces are plinth-sized, less feats of balance and more swooping odes to intense colour. Several gleaming works bear functional titles, such as Turquoise Curved Plane, while others have less sheen but more evocative monikers, like Voice or Resilience. These latter ones also offer another element, small punctures in Braille, Morse or binary code that point to meaning, yet remain opaque.

×

1 of 2

Expand

Sandra Ledingham, “Resilience,” no date

clay and glaze, 20.5″ x 9″ x 15″ (courtesy Winchester Galleries, Victoria)

×

2 of 2

Expand

Sandra Ledingham, “Resilience,” detail, no date

clay and glaze, 20.5″ x 9″ x 15″ (courtesy Winchester Galleries, Victoria)

Prev

Next

Part of me wants to contact Ledingham to find out what her messages say, if anything, while another part is content simply to accept the mystery. In a way, there seems to be a parallel with Collett’s work. Just as life teaches us to accept the inevitability of change, a theme Collett evokes through her layered materiality, Ledingham seems to simultaneously provoke our sense of curiosity and deny it, suggesting we need to accept that things will happen that, try as we might, we may never truly understand. 

In her statement, Ledingham proclaims: “As workers in clay, we should be proud we come from a fierce and pivotal material.” Fierce, for sure, in the way that life can be a fierce teacher. Pivotal, as in the important shift between two polarities? Most definitely. Wisdom can come from many places. ■  

Susan Collett and Sandra Ledingham at Winchester Galleries in Victoria from June 25 to July 28, 2021.

PS: Worried you missed something? See previous Galleries West stories here or sign up for our free biweekly newsletter.