Summer Salon: Illuminations

The Summer Salon: Illuminations is a dual installation of works by Alana Wilson & Ryder Jones. The works explore materiality and texture across a variety of mediums including ceramics, bronze, steel, and lighting components. 

Wilson’s work predominantly explores texture and experimental glazing techniques, combined with conceptual connotations of primitive form and utilitarianism. The works included in this exhibition are experimental sculptures, forms to cast light (Illuminations), and vessels. Over the past year Wilson has explored the ability for ceramic works to encourage a more perceptual experience for the viewer, in an attempt to raise the value of the medium within Fine Art and everyday life. The Illuminations, alongside some of the perforated works, allow light to exist in and around the pieces in areas that draw you closer to the works and highlight or abstract details in the surface. The colours of light and glaze depict a sense of optimism, close to those found in the skies and horizons of the rising and setting sun.

Ryder Jones says this about his work:

"I like to watch the sunrise in the morning. I like the sun. There is something about it. It makes me feel good, especially when it’s low in the sky. It’s always somewhere even when it’s dark.

In the past months I’ve noticed how the sun is a symbol for other things. I see it on a bottle of dishwashing liquid, a box of bananas, a car flying by. And I hear it on the radio, songs about sunshine that aren’t really about sunshine but about something else. When someone wants to say something they really feel they will often use a metaphor involving light. All this is mysterious and beautiful to me, this stuff about sunlight. So I make things in praise."