One Man Three Jars
Slip cast Porcelain and English bone china in museum case with label
350mmx300mmx200mm
In-Site, Ashmolean Museum
06/2012
One Man Three Jars is a slippery insertion into a rare opening in the packed visual territory of the Ashmolean collection. The fragile walled English bone china and porcelain vessels sit at ease alongside the finely rendered objects in the surrounding galleries, generating a reflective and seductive material allure. Appearing as descendants of the pot, they comfortably refer to an uninterrupted genealogy of ceramic craft as old as human culture, but in doing so they deceive. The subculture reference of their titling and the actual origin of their familiar seeming forms have more to say about modern processes of misuse and mass production. As such they become a metaphor for their own trojan entry into the constraints of the Ashmolean whilst posing a riddle to be solved, bringing the viewer eye to eye with their real intent.