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The Sacred and the Profane Amanda Game is intrigued by the diverse influences in Philip Eglin’s new work. Gathering dust on a glass shelf in Philip Eglin’s studio in Stokeon-Trent sit a group of tiny, modelled red clay figure groups of The Artist and his Model. Just a few centimetres high and created, he tells me, in a panic as he was coming towards the end of his three year study at the Royal College of Art and had not enough work to show for it, these captivating miniatures hold the seeds of much of what has followed in the subsequent two decades. In their almost Rubenesque curves one can see his remarkable, sensuous handling of clay, his developing references to the iconography and images of the art of the past, in particular the female nude, and his keen understanding of historical ceramics – in this case early Staffordshire figure groups. To spend a few hours in Eglin’s studio is to become physically
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and intellectually immersed in his exceptional and encyclopaedic imaginative world. The figures occupy one small shelf in a studio crammed with visual prompts for the viewer and the artist. Glaze tests; plaster moulds; newspaper photographs of jubilant footballers; his own life drawings; children’s drawings; half finished medieval jugs; scribbled notes; sheets of transfers; books of Renaissance paintings; piles of commercial china blanks; discards from printed Spode factory ware; bags of White St Thomas’s clay; plastic bottles; soft porn lithophanes; postcards of medieval woodcarvings and much, much more. The rhythm of his studio is almost overwhelming in its intensity of information, reminiscent of the studio of the late Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, lovingly recreated in all its eclectic glory at the Dean Gallery in Edinburgh.
1 Christ after Hugo van der Goes, porcelain, 2008, H63cm 2 Crucifixion, porcelain, 2008, H53cm 3 Pieta, raku, 2009, H43cm
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RCA AND AFTER Paolozzi was one of Eglin’s tutors at the RCA and
the young potter was pressed into service in the sculptor’s studio, modelling and making moulds – a practical training of some use to an emerging maker. Yet there is little stylistic trace of the mechanistic, robotic figure forms which are typical of the work of the Scottish artist. From the moment of graduation from the RCA in 1986 Eglin’s gaze has rested almost exclusively on the female form. The high bosomed, loosely modelled earthenware nudes inspired by the sinuous knowingness of Lucas Cranach’s paintings gave way to the blunt polychrome Madonna and Child figures that echo the physical qualities of the medieval religious woodcarvings, which are their visual inspiration. As Eglin says, clay has the potential ‘to mimic the essence of other materials’, something which clearly fascinates him in the same way that an artist like Gerhard Richter is fascinated by the potential of the painted surface; both to be and to represent many things. As we walk into the studio Eglin remarks that his forthcoming show at the Scottish Gallery is ‘all about religion’. A sheet of oxide transfers juxtaposing popes and prostitutes – mostly transfers derived from his own drawings as well as those made by his two sons Oliver and Morgan – highlights the ambiguity contained within these throwaway words. As John Christian observed, Eglin has an ‘eagerness to associate opposites: the ancient and the modern; the universal and the private; the sacred and the profane’. In the new work being moulded, modelled and considered in the studio, this duality is clearly apparent. Plastic juice bottles, littering the streets around his workshop, are seen as possible moulds for the bodies of his Christ figures in a new series of stoneware Crucifixions. To see at close quarters the compelling transformation of ribbed plastic waste into the stretched ribs of Christ in agony – as represented by thousands of carvers and painters throughout medieval Europe – is to understand the particular brilliance of Eglin’s visual alertness and his fascination with the transfer of language. A new group of seated Madonnas, assembled likewise from moulds of household waste, are
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4 Three Dog dishes, raku, 2009, Ø12cm each 5 Pieta, earthenware, 1999, H90cm 6 Christ as the Man of Sorrows, earthenware, 2008, Ø18cm 7 Pope and Prostitute, raku, 2009, W21cm
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being subjected to raku firings, which creates a softer quality of surface texture – with glimmerings of lustre – echoing the bleached, weathered quality of lime-wood medieval carvings. Eglin improvises within the language of clay to find visual equivalents for his fascination with different forms of language – both visual and verbal. RAKU Eglin describes his excitement with the immediacy of the
raku firing process – an excitement reanimated by a recent workshop with first year students at Stoke University where he teaches. The workbench on which the nascent Madonnas sit is covered with test pieces where he is trying to ensure that the definition of the transfer drawings is retained within the softness of the raku glazes, a process
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that involves fixing the transfers to the raw unglazed surface with latex. Although these laboratory test pieces suggest an artist with a scientific rigour of approach, Eglin is quick to dismiss any image of himself as the careful technologist. It is, he stresses, ‘at the point of unknowing that the magic happens’, and all the testing can be seen as the artist’s way of relaxing into a rhythm of thinking, like musical improvisation, to reach the right note. A recent exhibition at the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam (a secular exhibition space in a fifteenth century church) drew together works with religious iconography from the collections of the Stedelijk Museum and reunited Eglin’s earlier porcelain Madonnas with their spiritual home. The preciousness and vulnerability of the small-scale, white, gilt-edged figures, was enhanced through display in carefully lit, well-positioned glass cases in the historic church spaces – much like tiny altar pieces, their contemporary nature complemented by juxtaposition with paintings by Julian Schnabel and the photographic collages of Gilbert and George. Eglin was delighted by a display that emphasised his enquiry into contemporary image-making whilst respecting his fascination for objects of the past.
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8 Tomorrow's Assassin, earthenware, 2008, H52cm 9 La Nuova Religione, earthenware, 2008, H55cm 10 Poppadum Madonna, bone china, 2006, H43cm 11 Plaster moulds 12 Workshop wall
Technical Information See page 68 Photography Oliver Eglin Exhibition Popes, Pin-ups and Pooches, The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, until 5 September 2009
Web www.scottish-gallery.co.uk Philip Eglin Email phileglin@ntlworld.com Amanda Game Email amanda.game@yahoo.co.uk
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The new group of Madonnas, transfer printed plates and Crucifixions, on show in Edinburgh this summer, reveal an artist reaching a new confidence and maturity with his language. The duality, the playfulness and the ambiguity of Eglin’s new work draws the viewer into a fascinating conversation with the nature of objects and their role in allowing us to consider both ourselves, and the world around us, in different ways. It is an exciting moment to be part of Eglin’s journey.
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