Untitled (pasty for a confused potter)

Location

Country: Other
City: missing

This work is part of a series of ceramic landscapes by Simon Bayliss in the form of Cornish pasties – the traditional Cornish meal of a savory meat or vegetable filling baked in an enclosed pastry, now ubiquitous throughout the country but once a lunch staple for the region's miners. For an artist based in St Ives, Cornwall, this series of ‘pasties’, like numerous other works in Bayliss’s practice, carries the sense of a playful engagement with a place steeped in cultural and artistic history. Made out of cylinders thrown on the wheel and then cut and crimped over a newspaper form or filling, his hollow ‘pasties’ are decorated using gestural applications of slip (a liquid form of clay) before they are fired. The 'pasties' were thrown and assembled at Tresabenn Studio in Cornwall, where contemporary potter Richard Phethean teaches slipware decoration. They speak to the legacy of Michael Cardew (1901–83), the first apprentice of the influential studio potter Bernard Leach (1887–1979). Along with his role in reviving the British slipware tradition, Cardew, was openly bisexual at a time when this was illegal. Coming from a privileged background and a degree from Oxford, he is  remembered for his unconventional life story. Bayliss, who often references queer identity in his wider practice, pays homage to Cardew’s work, and Untitled (pasty for a confused potter), references the technique and decorative scheme of one of Cardew’s famous cider jars.

Born in Wolverhampton, Simon Bayliss was raised in Andros, The Bahamas and East Devon, and has been living in Cornwall most of his adult life. Trained as a painter and later as a potter, he works mainly in slipware ceramics, dance music and video, in addition to poetry and performance to explore intersections between the local and the international; traditional crafts and contemporary practice; and queer culture and rural identity. Selected exhibitions are 'Kangaroo Beach', Exeter Phoenix (2018); 'En plein air paintings & ceramics', Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall (2017); and 'Frantic Romantic, Eastside Projects', Birmingham (2016). Bayliss was the recipient of an Arts Council DYCP award for ceramics development 2019–20 and Leach Pottery Travel Bursar in 2019, and Standpoint Futures resident at Chisenhale Studios, London in 2017.

Places

Cornwall

Subjects

food & drink, pastry, Cornish pasty

Materials & Techniques

paint, ceramic, glazed, ceramic sculpture

Artist

Simon Bayliss (1984 - )

Title

Untitled (pasty for a confused potter)

Date

2017

Medium

glazed and painted terracotta

Dimensions

height: 26.0 cm; width: 30.5 cm; depth: 5.2 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the artist March 2021, through the Art XUK project 2020-21

Inscription

verso: signed 'SB / 17'

Provenance

The artist; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 18 March 2021

GAC number

18910