NICOLA TASSIE: LIGHT SCULPTURES

8 Holland Street, Bath  is thrilled to announce Nicola Tassie: Light Sculptures. The exhibition opens on Thursday 13th of June 2024. Nicola Tassie works with both ideas of utility and sculpture, Light Sculptures see’s the artist conflate these elements, using light as a metaphor for inspiration. Literally the light bulb moment, aiming for transformation, and hoping for self-illumination. Nicola Tassie presents a group of other worldly and unexpected lamps, and sculptural illuminations.

The Matmos series presents a group of multi-glazed stoneware standing lamps, using her signature wide palette of vibrant glazes. It’s debatable which came first, Tassie’s iconic totemic sculptures or these lamps…

In contrast, the Zig-zag lamps are a disruptor to the symmetry of the perfectly thrown, sinuous Matmos forms. Angles take surprising turns, funnel shapes become shades or twist out from their wall positions, and alternating glossy and matt glazes are used to distort form.

Funnels and trumpets predominate in the Luminos series , this new group of fantasy works were tested out about 7 years ago. Tassie has returned to the original inspiration - Edward Lear’s nonsense rhyme ‘the Dong with the Luminous Nose’ to expand on the series. The story of a lonely man crafting a light within his body to illuminate his night wanderings appealed to the artist. These creature-like table lights have pierced bodies balanced with trumpet like protrusions which project the light out.

Ceramics can often have anthropomorphic tendencies, and clay is the most emotionally expressive of all the plastic arts.  In the Desk lamp series, the strictly utilitarian Anglepoise lamps have undergone an emotional collapse, indeed one is named after a romantic breakup. They are part of Tassie’s ongoing project, probing the emotional life of inanimate objects.

There is a tradition of artists working with light, in this new exhibition with 8 Holland Street, Nicola Tassie creates narratives out of design staples, confuses function and form, to make a witty, original and majestic collection.