Anne Marie Laureys (1962), studied ceramics in Ghent at the Higher Institute of Arts, Saint Luc, since then she never had a day without ‘Clay’.Throwing is her language to go into the material, clay.
She likes her ceramics to have a sense of excitement and a freshness, and they must be tactile. Making is exploring the physical law of the material, clay, in order to give form at the sensual engagement she has with. It is a celebration of a tense moment of meeting to create spacious, fine, delicate forms that reveals the speed, fluency and the ultra plasticity of clay. Into her thrown and altered forms she tries to put an extremely personal sensibility that goes hand in hand with the tension and flexibility of a wet pot.She ames to develop a great variety of senses, to show the results of a very physical and palpable human gesture which is mysterious like the sexual experience. She says “My ceramics are metaphors for ‘feeling’”.
The process starts by throwing a classic, symmetrical pot. Whilst the clay is still soft and wet, she pulls at it folding, pinching and puncturing it, the tension of the clay underneath her fingers dictating the way the folds will take shape. She describes this process as : “a physical exploration of action, reaction and interaction between hand, mind and material” Although the pieces seem to have a random quality, Laureys takes her time finding the shape of a bowl, remoulding and refolding the clay over and over again. No two pots are the same, and in this she takes her inspiration from the work of George E. Ohr,an American potter (1857-1918). This spirit is the origin the forms in the Clay-e-motion series (2001-2008) were created in.
Clay-e-motion, after long consideration Laureys came to this notion. She is eager to combine ceramics with emotions. By restricting to recipients she offers herself the opportunity to let in this fragile, vulnerable, mature sometimes even bombastic atmosphere.
However …… 2009 is a start for further explorations into the vesselforms. At the moment she ames to deconstruct/ devellop / research even more the idea of ‘the’ vessel, the ‘container’ Although the knowledge of the universality that draws her to vessel forms there is a need for a constant dialogue between the thrown form, the skin, the exterior and the emotional interior that indicates a possibility of limitlessness.
Anne Marie wants to break out of the rim, the lip of a thrown form, a limit.
By modelling two clay forms one as a collar on a thrown and altered body she ames to lenghten the movement hidden in the container already. This results in a damp down of the movements coming together in the neck of the form, wide or narrow.
She also puts 2 vessels one on top of the other. Looking for a focuss on the body, playing with the movements that come into collide. Hiding the inside, by framing the outside.
So going beyond the vessel …..
That is how the the ‘clouds by my fingers’ series 09 are created. The fusion of the vesselforms creates threedimensional physical forms looking like clouds, floating, levitated by the power of the motions that come together. The marks originated by throwing the lump of clay and altering the clay walls, by hand and fingers are playing about. The bottom and rim of a vessel have changed location. The exterior of the form creates a dialogue with the interior emotion hidden in a the cloudlike shape ……
Anne Marie Laureys her work can be found in private collections all over the world and in public collections of the Province of Hainaut,Belgium, The Taipei county YinggeCeramics Museum, Taiwan, The arts and Crafts Museum of Shanghai, China and the Keramikmuseum, Westerwald, Germany, Recently Haags Gemeentemuseum, NL and Ariana Museum, Genève, CH acquired a unique piece of ceramics made by Anne Marie Laureys.
