Back to photostream

Neil Forrest HM SMU front

Neil Forrest uses various systems of interconnecting nodes that spread in a matrix. These are generated as dimensional field ornament that corresponds to the distinctive curved space produced by arabesque and muqarna of Islam. Forrest’s work presents a detached ceramic ornament in response to the changing typographies within contemporary architecture - expanding systems intended to modify the psyche of space that is distinguished by lightness and openness. Forrest’s architectural ceramics are porcelain scaffolds, resembling coral environments and truss-like vertebrae.

 

Working from Gottfried Semper’s analysis that the dressing or decorative surface perform the spatial essence of the wall, and emphasizing the architectural significance of the ‘joint’, Forrest presents a tectonic and nomadic ceramic ornament. The project of ‘colonizing architecture’ is a theory of connectedness enabling close independence, which embraces the principle of non-hierarchical pattern behaviors that largely underpin the decorative arts.

 

Here ornament is understood as the libido for contemporary architecture, and can be tasked as having increasing utility to the organism of architecture, ready to engage an elegantly engineered world.

 

 

Neil Forrest has exhibited and lectured in North America, UK, Europe and Asia, and is currently Professor of Ceramics at NSCAD University. His most recent exhibitions were Wurzelwerk, Scaffs and Thicket. His ceramics have been published in books, craft magazines and architectural journals. Forrest studied at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Alfred University and Sheridan College of Crafts and is involved in several research collaborations that examine ceramics for architecture.

 

6,105 views
10 faves
0 comments
Uploaded on April 4, 2007
Taken on August 16, 2006