'Museu Nacional do Azulejo' Lisbon

I've never been so engrossed and amazed by a museum as I was in the National Tile museum of Lisbon. It's so rare to see an exhibition of exclusively ceramics and it was so refreshing and inspiring I will never forget it. The town itself is already like an exhibition of azulejos, but the transition of tile work over many centuries from the 1600's to the art deco of the '20s, the tea set from the '70s to Vasconcelos' of of Portugal's most celebrated contemporary artists. I found it really interesting to see the progression from Islamic geometric designs to the portrayal of figures and animals after the reconquista, and industrialisation in the 19th century to simpler transfer printed designs. I was really intrigued by the decorative methods used by modern artists- stencilling on large scales, crackle glazes, combining matte and gloss, relief work, the contrast between painterly detailed works and industrialised, reproduced precise pattern.

zine

water colour zine of tiles from the tile museum Lisbon

Joana Vasconcelos

Vasconcelos creates large-scale sculptures and installations, often with performance components, which encourage viewers to walk through and touch them. She is also known for enveloping everyday objects—pianos, laptops, commercially produced decorative objects—in crocheted or knitted material. Through such works, she contrasts mass-produced and handcrafted of the domestic environment using public space to questioning the status of women, consumerism society and collective identity. Vasconcelos’s work also confronts sexism in society by her use of craft techniques typically associated with women, such as crochet and sewing, which have been disregarded in the fine art world and largely dismissed. This phenomenon is something which has caught my interest recently, as I have been learning a new appreciation for various textile crafts.

Vasconcelos first attracted international acclaim at the 2005 Venice Biennale with A Noiva (The Bride), a chandelier crafted from 25,000 tampons. She was also the youngest artist and the only woman ever at Palace of Versailles, to a record breaking 1.6 million visitors, her 2012 exhibition was the most visited in France in 50 years. This year she has been working on her most ambitious project to date: the Wedding Cake for Lord Jacob Rothschild's Waddesdon Manor (in England).