Mimi Joung presents a new body of work inspired by the weather, the landscape and poetry.
For Mimi, weather and words shape our lives, one sculpting the land and the cultures of human life and the other moulding our hearts and our minds. Each piece, their colour, their form and their meaning come from a range of poems that have inspired Mimi’s practice as an artist, a maker and a ceramicist.
“No talking, no talking. The snow is falling. And the wind seems to be blowing backward.”
Song of an Old Woman in the Cold
To make her work, Mimi reads and re-reads each poem and then traces and tapes the words in white or coloured porcelain slip, either repeating a short poem again and again, or building the whole form from one longer poem.
“There are birds on the water, birds in the air. birds on the snags and the conifers, birds flying down to the lake floor, birds on the ice, half a million years old, that is melting away at the foot of the world”
Birds on the Water, Robert Bringhurst
Like poetry itself, each piece carries its own uniqueness, firstly through the words themselves, then through the way that Mimi builds the work with her hands and finally through the magic of her kiln, where a unique manmade weather shapes the final form.
after WS Graham
52 x 40 x 40 cms, Porcelain
after Ted Hughes
40 x 40 x 20 cms, Porcelain
Calm, Light air, Light breeze, Gentle breeze, Moderate breeze, Fresh breeze, Strong breeze, High wind, moderate gale, near gale, Gale, fresh gale, Strong/severe gale, Storm, whole gale, Violent storm, Hurricane-force
The air is filled with foam and spray; sea is completely white with driving spray; visibility very seriously affected
20 x 20 x 5 cms, Porcelain
Calm, Light air, Light breeze, Gentle breeze, Moderate breeze, Fresh breeze, Strong breeze, High wind, moderate gale, near gale, Gale, fresh gale, Strong/severe gale, Storm, whole gale, Violent storm, Hurricane-force
Devastation
after Elizabeth Bishop
45 x 30 x 30 cms, Porcelain
after John Donne
48 x 30 x 7 cms, Porcelain
after Navajo Ceremonial song
after Robert Bringhurst
Sonnet 33 after William Shakespeare
after John Clare
after Edvard Munch
after Proust
after T. S. Eliot
after Philip Larkin
after the Swampy Cree Indians
after Thomas Hardy
after Walter de la Mare
after Sioux and Chippewa Songs
after Edward Thomas
after D H Lawrence