Philip Lee

London Gallery West
University of Westminster
Harrow Campus
Northwick Park
Harrow
Middlesex
HA1 3TP
00 44 (0) 20 7911 5000 4774
http://www.wmin.ac.uk/ (search 'Gallery')

By Tube: Northwick Park Station, Metropolitan Line
Car Parking Available

With the recent 2004 exhibition 'The Secret History of Clay' at Tate Liverpool and Grayson's Perry success, this exhibition is a further testament to the repositioning of ceramics within the mainstream of visual art. In 'Pieces By Eight', the transition from ceramics as craft to ceramics as art is visible through an attention to material, aesthetics and the use of installation, photography, performance and sculpture as exhibition forms. A further commonality in 'Pieces By Eight' is the parallel development of process and object - the works in the exhibition are not the manifestation of single conceptual ideas but the result of the complex interweaving of the physicality of the object and the fragility of thought. The artists in this exhibition take ceramics in surprisingly new directions - moving away from clay as pottery and focusing on the transformational and temporal nature of clay as a subjective, transcendental and poetic material.

As Kyra Cane succinctly writes in the exhibition catalogue: "As a group they represent a new trend, one in which clay is used as a highly expressive medium, exploiting its capacity to take on infinite guises and to use installation as a means of communication; they are producing work which employs metaphor and paradox: ceramic that explores narrative. Their activities seek to challenge boundaries, defy description, and perhaps most importantly, each to argue a particular point of view."

PHILIP LEE PERFORMANCE Thursday 15 September 8.00-8.30 pm

For the opening of Pieces By Eight, Philip Lee will perform Slip VI. In a performance involving endurance he will invite the viewer to see the body as mark maker and art object. Philip uses his body and earth materials in live performances that challenge body preconceptions and taboos. They are ritualistic, sometimes playful, and subvert visual art tradition.

GALLERY TALK with the artists:
Wednesday 12 October, 2.30pm. London Gallery West

A fully illustrated catalogue of the exhibition, including a contextual essay by Janice West will be available at the exhibition.

PRESS IMAGES AVAILABLE. PLEASE CONTACT:
- m.maziere@wmin.ac.uk
- 020 7911 5000 ext 4774