MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Presenting works by Joseph Gabriel, Hanna Pettyjohn, and Pam Quinto, Resonant Earth prospects the possibilities of contemporary ceramics in extrapolating a cosmopolitan and modernist history of craft. The exhibition takes its cue from a 1961 essay by painter Fernando Zobel de Ayala titled “The First Philippine Porcelain.”
The essay historicizes the porcelain manufacturing company “La Porcelanica” which was founded by the painter’s father with the help of Japanese industry experts, and which facilitated the training of Filipino apprentices.
Only one artifact has been documented to survive from the company and Zobel has annotated it in the essay identifying it as “an interesting example of Philippine craft ideals during the first decades of the twentieth century.”
From this singular object and the contexts of production to which the essay alludes, the exhibition asks the artists to consider the made thing and its annotation as archive. The exhibition in this sense proposes an interfacing of the artistic, art historical, and the curatorial to speculate on ceramics as contemporary form—able to problematize its own artistic history and suggest its trajectories.
Working from different sites (Manila, London, Dallas), the artists’ practices embody contemporary ceramics as a cosmopolitan enterprise. Each work for the exhibition uses earth from these different locations and responds to different aspects of the medium’s technology and stylistic and material circulation. In the hands of these artists and in the almost alchemical transmutation of raw clay into ceramics, earth becomes resonant—mobilized to speak to and converse with the prolific contexts of artistic agency, art historical contingencies, and the discursive conditions of imagining the future of Philippine porcelain.
Gallery visits are limited and by appointment only, from Tuesday to Saturday, 10: AM to 4:00 PM. There is no entrance fee; we only ask that you schedule your visit in advance through bit.ly/VisitSilverlens
