Materiality Matters! Impressions from the European Ceramic Context biennial 2014

Last weekend, the European Ceramic Context biennial (ECC) took place for the fifth time; this time organised by KADK Bornholm/Department of Product Design along with Bornholm Art Musem and Grønbechsgård Centre for Ceramics. The biennial attracted some 400-500 participants from all over the world to the passionately craft-loving island of Bornholm where the beautiful exhibition spaces of Bornholm Art Museum, Grønbechsgård, and a number of other galleries put internationally leading ceramic craft on display.

For me, as a new head of department, the ECC on Bornhom was a fantastic opportunity to meet the international ceramic craft environment and to celebrate a splendid success--the result of two years' hard work by curator and project manager Susanne Jøker Johnsen and by Lars Kærulf Møller (Bornholm Art Museum), Mai Ørsted (Grønbechgård), and Christian Heide Petersen (KADK Bornholm) from the ECC steering group.

I had the pleasure to follow Susanne and Lars before and during the ECC opening and was thus well introduced to the ECC biennial jury: Namita Gubta Wiggers, Clemence van Lunen, and Lars, as well as to the artistists-in-residence and speakers at the ECC conference on Sunday, Materiality: The Value of Matter and Making organised by KADK Bornholm.

For me it was a special pleasure to see that the students at the KADK craft programme in Nexø had made their own exhibition, INSIGHTS!, in the school's hallway (curated by Sisse Lee Jørgensen) and that many students also took actively part in the Sunday (!) conference.

Also it was a special pleasure to attend the gallery opening of a recent KADK gradutate (and my former student from the ITU) Christina Schou Christensen's show in Allinge. Not even a dramatic cloudburst on the night of the conference party at "Kyllingemoderen" and subsequent electrical power outages on the Eastern part of the island could ruin the good vibes that continued all through the four days of the main programme.

I only regret that I could not follow Alexandra Engelfriet's subsequent masterclass, Materiality: Body as Tool--Ceramic Heritage as Matter which went on for another week after the biennial weekend in the Klinkerskoven around the old Hasle Tile Factory. I would have loved to see the place being transformed into an "Andrei Tarkovsky"-like landscape by means of Alexandra's strong body and mind. And I wouldn't at all have minded getting a little muddy and messy.