Bouke de Vries
Netherlander Bouke de Vries trained first in design at Eindhoven and Central St Martins and worked with John Galiano, Stephen Jones and Zandra Rhodes before retraining in ceramics conservation and restoration, a skill that is integral to his recently developed artistic practice. Using reclaimed broken china, glass and pottery, often pieces that have lost a high value in their breaking, de Vries reconstructs them in fragmented or altered forms. He describes their breaking as their trauma - the most dramatic episode in the life of a ceramic object - and he explores and emphasises this point, looking to both the life and value of the broken ceramic, his own experience from Dutch 17th and 18th century still-life painting he saw growing up and to contemporary life.
Sands Of Time
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Sculpture
17cm x 26cm x 17cm
Hourglass and mixed media
Echoing the point of destruction of the hour-glass itself, here de Vries puts together several icons from Memento Mori ('remember you shall die'), an offshoot from 17th and 18th century symbolism in oil painting, from the insect to butterfly transformation to the obvious sands of time. The still life scene has been frozen at the moment of its own destruction, the whole glass structure falling out rather than just the sand.
£1,500
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