Nick Renshaw - Visual Artist

Plaything is the title of an exhibition of ceramic sculptures which portrayed a series of outsized toys or other objects which are in some way suggestive of such ideas. What are recognisable as supposedly unthreatening images associated with notions of comfort and solace are made in such ways using a medium which by and large contradicts such qualities. That is, the fired ceramic state becomes hard, frozen and unmoving. The surfaces, though seemingly as soft and giving as the originals they represent are cold and unyielding. The choice of glaze material above the stone-like mass beneath challenges similarly the idea of a soft material. Shiny, smooth, literally glass like surfaces encase the form making it inpenetrable. The industrial yellows and blues accentuate the incongruity of the sculptures challenging the concept of the warm fabric one would expect. The works are at once a contemporary visual interpretation, calling into question preconceived expectations, as well perhaps as preserved archeological finds, encased in their protective shells.