Extract from ‘Lost and Found’ in Ceramic Review

August 19 2016

Owen Quinlan’s Animate Object series, which combines found materials with added layers applied to their weathered and aged surfaces, suggests an intriguing lack of self, regarding past use or identity, that dual state of uncertainly and permanence, qualities of both industrial and natural. Within the firing process, these newly formed objects, which move as much as the glazing will allow, have the ability to completely transform.

Fired within saggars, to protect the kiln, what comes out can sometimes be completely different to what was put in. ‘There’s that kind of serendipity and sense of the unknown to it’ Quinlan muses, ‘a successful piece should identify as something which has been at some point man-made and should hopefully stir curiosity as to a once possible function, but not answer any more’. What is important, it seems, is that an open-ended interpretation of these objects remains with the viewer.

Extract from ‘Lost and Found’, a profile of Owen Quinlan in the current edition of Ceramic Review


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