An installation of experimental ceramics by John Parker. John Parker is a leading New Zealand ceramic maker who has been working solely with white glazed forms since 1997. His Superstrata installation is an experiment, exploring the possibilities of layering white on white, of overlapping textures, of interactive glazes and of competing shapes within the white tonal continuum. By extending these ideas beyond their logical conclusions the aim is to take the artist and his audience outside their normal comfort zones of accepted definitions of beauty and ugliness. 

"All my work in clay has normally been hand thrown and turned on a potter's wheel and glazed and fired in the traditional studio pottery sense. My ceramic work owes its origins to industrial ceramics. I have never been influenced by nature and am very suspect of 'Impressions of Nature' type ceramics. I find this new work, by its very forming technique of piping Paper Clay, like classic cake icing, into plaster moulds or other formers, takes on a more random organic quality. After discovering Paper Clay on a course, I was interested in exploring the nature of structure and the architectural construction of actually how forms were put together and built up in the same way that, layers of sedimentation, build-ups of chemicals as stalagmites, growth of marine creatures as coral, the combining of mud and cellulose into the paper wasp nest, all manifest their structural construction. I spend half my life working as theatre designer. My style is minimal and relies heavily on lighting design. This experimental installation references my earlier ceramic Gobo works, where regularly spaced holes drilled in pieces cast shadows in the same way the gobo in a theatre lamp casts atmospheric shadows onto actors and sets. The Paper Clay pieces are basically structural grids, which cast square shadows."

- John Parker

Superstrata is presented by Objectspace in association with AK 05.