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About Auction House

CFile Daily, a news and review journal edited by Garth Clark, receives over 720,000 visits a year (and growing) from readers in 189 countries. Only two years old, it’s already the most influential champion for avant-garde ceramics.  

Auction Previews & News

4 Results
  • Press Release
    Library | Breaking Ground, Indian Ceramics Triennale

    Big thanks to the Indian Ceramics Triennal for letting Cfile.library publish their very interesting and informative catalog. This catalog is available for free in Cfile’s Online Publications. Breaking Ground: Indian Ceramics TriennialJaipur: The Contemporary Clay Foundation & Jawahar Kala Kendra, 201822 Pages The group exhibition Breaking Ground took place in Jaipur, the capital of India’s Rajasthan state on 31 August- 18 November, 2018. The exhibition was mean to celebrate existing ceramics traditions in India, as well as contemporary influences. The catalog now available in Cfile, highlights some of the artists represented in the show. Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran “Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran creates rough-edge vibrant, new age idols that are at once enticing and disquieting. He experiments with form and scale in the context of figurative sculpture to explore the politics of sex, the monument, gender, and religion.” Jessika Edgar, Used and Abused, 2015, 55 x in 23 in x 16 in, Ceramic and glaze, microcrystalline “Jessika Edgar’s work is an exploration of representation through the idea of formlessness. She is interested in expanding this idea into relationship with socially constructed identity and its value while referencing contemporary popular culture and perception and influences of mass media influences that propagate consumption.”

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  • Press Release
    From The Vault | Echo Morgan’s Darkness Is Undressed In Heartbreaking Performance

    Cfile.Daily’s vault contains over 3,000 articles, reviews, surveys, exhibition catalogs and online books. From time to time Cfile republishes some gems from the past. You can also use our search bar to find and explore the artists or subjects that interest you.  This Cfile.Daily vault post was originally published in February 2015. Drawing on her volatile personal history as a child growing up in China, Echo Morgan, whose real name Xie Rong, creates devastatingly emotional performance art. One piece titled Be the Inside of the Vase performed in 2012 at The Royal College of Art in London was based on a conflicting childhood memory. Her mother would tell her “Don’t be a vase, pretty but empty inside, be the inside, be the quality!” while her father would say, “Women should be like vase, smooth, decorative and empty inside!” Beginning with this memory, Morgan pulls the audience deep into her personal history and psyche. https://vimeo.com/50719131 Featured Image: Echo Morgan, Be the Inside of the Vase (Performance Still), Part 2: Break the Vase, 2012, clay, Chinese tissue paper, willow sculpture, water balloons, aluminum, Photographs: Jamie Baker Be the Inside of the Vase was divided into two parts and begins with the background of her difficult upbringing. Morgan explains, “The first story [Million Dollar Baby] began with my father’s attempt to commit suicide. He owed everyone money. The performance revealed my uneasy childhood and difficult relationship with my father.” In the performance, Morgan stood motionless, painted like a blue and white song dynasty vase, while a recording of her voice was projected into the room telling her heartbreaking story. Million Dollar Baby begins with a description of her father, neglecting their family, falling into debt and attempting suicide, all a result of his pursuit of his beloved Song Dynasty vase collection. After Morgan’s mother and father divorced in 2011 he promised to make up for his poor fathering and sell his vase collection to pay for Morgan’s college education. He got a loan from her mother to send the vases to auction, where they were promptly confiscated for being stolen goods. The story continues, revealing equally outrageous stories including…

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  • Press Release
    Exhibition | ‘The Squash,’ Anthea Hamilton Explores Imagery’s Physical Knowledge

    LONDON––Tate Britain presents The Squash (March 22 – October 7, 2018), an immersive, tile-covered installation combining performance and sculpture by 2016 Turner Prize nominee Anthea Hamilton. The exhibition is part of Sotheby’s annual Tate Britain Commission, which invites contemporary British artists to create innovative new sculptural artwork in the setting of England’s first public gallery designed specifically for such displays––the Duveen Galleries. For her installation, Tate Britian writes, Hamilton transformed the space into an elaborate arena for a continuous 6-month performance by a delightfully dressed squash inhabitant. Setting the stage are more than 7,000 white floor tiles, which traverse the vast length of, and juxtapose, the neoclassical galleries. They also make up a varied series of large structures, which not only serve as staging areas for Hamilton’s squash character, but also as plinths for a number of artworks from Tate’s collection, chosen by the artist for their organic forms and colors. “Anthea Hamilton has made a unique contribution to British and International Art with her visually playful works that both provoke and delight. This compelling commission demonstrates her ability to seamlessly weave together captivating images and narratives, creating rich new environments in which to encounter works of art.” ––Alex Farquharson, Director, Tate Britain. Influenced by early 20th century French writer and dramatist Antonin Artaud and his call for the ‘physical knowledge of images’, it is this bodily response to an idea or an image which Hamilton strives to examine in The Squash. Each element of the work has evolved from Hamilton’s interest in a found photograph, for which the original source has since been lost. Thus, the viewer is invited to imagine its history and intention, through the artist’s employment of tile, structure, sculptures and costume. Hamilton designed seven costumes in collaboration with LOEWE Creative Director Jonathan Anderson which draw from the colors and shapes of varieties of squash or pumpkin. Performers will select a costume each day, informing and reflecting their individual interpretation of the character as they inhabit the space. Anthea Hamilton Anthea Hamilton is renowned for her bold, often humorous works which incorporate references from the worlds of art, design, fashion and popular culture. She has exhibited…

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  • Press Release
    NewsFile | Dadaist Zines, A Mega Vessel, Death of the Art Museum + More

    Welcome to NewsFile, your weekly round-up of newsy tidbits and happenings from the world of contemporary ceramic art and contemporary ceramics. We begin our week with some sobering statistics regarding art museum attendance. Museum Attendance Declining Art and culture museums may be in trouble. Attendance in many museums across the U.S. is falling, but the reasons why aren’t so clear, Hyperallergic reports citing statistical evidence coming out of the scene in Baltimore. Mary Carole McCauley, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun has recently written about precipitous declines in attendance, citing drops in annual attendance at the Baltimore Museum of Art of 12.7% in the last 15 years, at the Walters Art Museum of 24.1% from a peak of 195,000 visitors in 2008, and at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture, which has seen attendance sink 53% from the opening-year high of 104,500 visitors. The sobering numbers find corroboration nationwide conveying a narrative of museum-going being on the downtrend. She writes that “the National Endowment for the Arts reports attendance at art museums dropped 16.8 percent — even as the population grew by more than 33 million people, and museums began offering free admission.” It’s not clear to me where these statistics originate. McCauley cites a National Endowment for the Arts report that shows that 18.7% of US adults visited an art exhibition in a museum or gallery in 2015, as opposed to 26.5% in 2002 — which is a drop of only 7.8% not 16.8%. Surface Design Show The UK’s upcoming Surface Design Show (London, February 6 – 8, 2018) presents the latest materials for architecture and interior design, Dezeen writes adding it’s the only event to focus solely on interior and exterior surface materials such as ceramic tile. This year’s event will see over 170 exhibitors present “the very best” in surface design, from hand-crafted surfaces to the latest technological advances in architectural lighting. Giant Vessel Structure Nears Completion Construction on British designer Thomas Heatherwick’s Heatherwick Studio’s monumental Vesselstructure, is expected at its full height, Dezeen writes.  Made up of 154 interlinking honeycomb staircases, the structure will form the centerpiece of New York’s Hudson Yards development and will highlight views of the up and coming  area. The steps…

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