Forever Young
Runa Islam, Forever Young
Runa Islam, Forever Young
I discovered the five ceramic animals that are now one half of Forever Young during my visit to the San Giorgio laboratory. They were in the storeroom at the back of the workshop, hidden in between the more general objects of plates and pots that are produced there. Except for the dust that had collected on them for the last 30 years or so, the animals had remained untouched – powder white and unglazed – just as they were when they were first laid to dry. It has been the lack of demand for these particular artefacts that has kept them in this forgotten state resembling relics.
When I first identified the animals amongst the other objects – the giraffe’s long neck and the elephant’s raised trunk – there was something strikingly animate about the figures compared to the other decorative objects. They caught my imagination, as if they were real small animals lost in the workshop’s sea of activity. Even though the original purpose of the visit to the San Giorgio laboratory was to make a new work in ceramic using the expertise of the workshop, it was the forgotten animals that left an impression on me. For the 2006 Biennale of Ceramics in Contemporary Art, the the San Giorgio laboratory, as a technical and historical repetition, recast each animal using the original moulds that date back to the early 1960s.
The second half of Forever Young are the five cloned figures that, when standing side by side next to the first set, create an uncanny characterisation of the 40 years or so that have passed between them.
Runa Islam
Forever Young by Runa Islam was made in Albisola (Italy) in 2006 during the 3rd Biennial of Ceramics in Contemporary Art.
