Caroline Achaintre - Johan Creten - Jessica Jackson Hutchins Rachel Kneebone - William J O’Brien - Mai-Thu Perret - Norbert Prangenberg

Timothy Taylor Gallery is pleased to announce a group exhibition of new and recent sculptures that variously represent physical human attributes in symbolic, idealised, and reductive forms.

Several of the works featured reveal an interest in organic or unrefined molding and finish, and subsequently resemble ancient artefacts. A marked preoccupation with heads and faces imbues a number of these sculptures with anthropological and totemic qualities, as evident in William J O’Brien’s primeval bust, Untitled, 2009.

The repeated motifs in Mai-Thu Perret’s sculptures have a timeless and symbolic quality. Eggs, masks, and hair all appear in wall based pieces that straddle both the ancient and contemporary worlds. Emerging as if half sunk from uniform blocks, these forms are evocative of excavated fossils.

Rachel Kneebone uses formal slippage and a baroque sense of movement to create beautifully intricate porcelain tableaux. Situated upon fragmented podiums, her writhing and conjoined figures grow from and into ambiguous vegetal tendrils while maintaining poses derived from classical antiquity.

Johan Creten’s delicate glazed porcelain wall piece, Odore di Femmina de Sèvres, Vulve Verte, 2005, also conveys a sense of a life-force and life forms in a state of flux. Metamorphosing from an explicit, sexual organ into a mass of organic, marine-born growths, his sculptures dissolve the hierarchy between the human and nature.

Jessica Jackson Hutchins’ crude but jewel-like vessels similarly allude to the reproductive function of the female body, but in this instance as carrier and deliverer. While their scale reminds us of the original domestic function of pottery, these forlorn surrogates also efficiently convey human personalities.

Although abstract in form and frequently architectural in the geometric designs of their glazes, Norbert Prangenberg’s small-scaled sculptures typically reveal facial characteristics. Rough and awkward, his approach to the medium runs counter to the qualities of preciousness and all-over finish that are traditionally associated with ceramic and faience.

Caroline Achaintre’s works are informed by Primitivism and have the appearance of having once fulfilled a ceremonial function. Her wall-based pieces typically recall tribal masks or are suggestive of heads. In Wicker, 2011, an object we might imagine as having been rudimentarily fashioned from reeds is replicated in white woven glazed ceramic strips and black patent leather strands.

Archetypes will be shown as part of the gallery’s Viewing Room programme. The main gallery will continue with Jean-Marc Bustamante’s Take Something Hot and Cool it Down, until 27 May.