Press Release

The Wallace Collection & Bonhams
London, 19th March 2012

Seven unique ceramic works by Dutch contemporary designers and artists, inspired by Dutch old master paintings in the Wallace Collection, are to be offered for sale in a silent auction on the occasion of the re-opening of the Dutch Galleries at the Wallace Collection in London.

The famous Dutch Galleries of the Wallace Collection will officially be re-opened on Thursday, 19th April 2012, following a major refurbishment. To mark the occasion, the Wallace Collection has invited a group of Dutch contemporary designers and artists to create seven ceramic table centrepieces. The project is sponsored by Bonhams auctioneers. The resulting unique works of art, which were inspired by the Dutch old master paintings in the Wallace Collection, will be offered for sale in a silent auction to benefit the museum.

A sneak preview of the works of art will be held at Bonhams, 101 New Bond Street, London W1S 1SR, to coincide with the exhibitions of Bonhams’ forthcoming auctions of Contemporary and Urban art from Sunday, 25th March to Thursday, 29th March. For more information on how to bid visit our special web-page at www.bonhams.com/events or contact Amy Randall at the Wallace Collection, +44 (0)20 7563-9567, amy.randall@wallacecollection.org. Bids are invited from Sunday, 25th March 2012.

The silent auction will conclude on Thursday, 19th April 2012, at the official re-opening of the Dutch Galleries at the Wallace Collection, Manchester Square, London W1U 3BN.

The project, which was initiated by Dutch designers Krijn Christiaansen and Cathelijne Montens, is titled Conversation Piece, after the painterly genre of informal group portraits of which the most famous example is Rembrandt’s Night Watch. The term later acquired an additional meaning, referring to elaborate table centrepieces—particularly those made of ceramics—that are designed to spark conversation among guests at a table. Starting with this double meaning, which unites Dutch old master paintings and ceramic design, the pair formed an informal group of designers and artists, each of whom was asked to create a large and unique ceramic table centrepiece inspired by a particular work or genre from the Dutch Galleries at the Wallace Collection.

The project’s participants are visual artists Marina De Caro (AR) and Goele Dewanckel (BE), and designers Joris Landman (NL) and Novak (NL). While used to working in a broad range of disciplines, including graphic design and sculpture, most of the artists were new to the medium of ceramics, and the results are beautiful, imaginative and original.

For example, Cathelijne Montens began by looking at still-life paintings in the Wallace Collection that include dead animals. Working with a taxidermist, she used real animal bodies to cast beautiful stoneware moulds that result in textured objects of great tactile quality and character. Novak (Rene Tichelaar and Eva van der Schans) used their graphic design skills to translate pottery vessels depicted in 17th-century Dutch paintings to real works of art. They then combined these objects to form an entirely new composition, adding the illusion of light found in the paintings from which they are derived. The other artists in the project used similarly imaginative and varied processes to create their works of art.

The ideas for these conversation pieces were developed and realised over a five-week period at Sundaymorning@ekwc: a Dutch artist-in-residence centre at the forefront of international ceramic art and design.

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Günter Beer