Eric Bainbridge Essay by Olivia Bax

Eric Bainbridge has been going to France for over 20 years. He describes the brocante sales in French villages as “the best exhibitions he’s ever seen.” The British equivalent is a flea market or car boot sale but they lack the romance of a brocante.  French villagers lay out their bric-a-brac and domestic goods on the street alongside antique specialists. Sunshine, food, drink and combinations of stuff, “everyone who is interested in objects should experience a brocante.”[1]

 

For decades, Bainbridge has been asking, “how can I test my own theory of what is acceptable”[2]. His Steel Sculptures exhibition at Camden Arts Centre in 2012 was prompted by his enduring dismay at having seen an entire cohort of Central Saint Martins students present cloned work some 35 years earlier when he was a student. “I saw a room of steel sculptures which all looked the same, not one student could be distinguished from the next. I was horrified.”[3]  An ideology had taken root. 

 

Bainbridge is based near Sunderland, a city celebrated for glass manufacturing and home of the National Glass Centre. During lockdown, I binge-watched Blown Away. The programme purports to show a number of artisans competing to be the best glass blower, expecting wonders of contestants under artificial pressure.  The camera follows the contestants’ attempt to blow, bend, fuse (break) glass into objects in very limited time for a ‘jaw-dropping’ exhibition reveal.  “Look! It’s a fried egg; in glass. I hope the judges can see my creative genius!”[4] 

 

Reality TV like Blown Away and The Great Pottery Throw Down demonstrate how two materials, glass and ceramics, have shifted from tableware to galleries to Netflix. Both materials have seen a fashionable trend turned into a tsunami of replicas.  It’s a long way from Eastern European glass traditions. A vase can no longer be a vase. It has to be an ‘art vase’.

 

Ceramic and glass objects are under scrutiny in Harmony Plus at Workplace Gallery.  The original objects used here, were sourced from charity shops and markets in the North of England, “hunting them takes longer than making them”[5]. Bainbridge selects objects which have been “artistically elevated”.  In other words, Bainbridge never chose anything too basic.  Then he classified and grouped them formally, crudely sticking them together with coloured resin and fiberglass. 

 

Elements are turned upside down.  Sometimes the stamp of the manufacturing process is revealed.  Suddenly the known object becomes less familiar. Unlikely combinations are created.  By perverting the usual arrangement of everyday objects, Bainbridge questions their cultural and aesthetic values.  He tests the pretentiousness of the objects and the material ‘rules’ of what we can and cannot do with them. Recognisable objects are denied their function and we are forced to experience them differently.

What is most admirable is Bainbridge’s admission that he will not buy an object which has become ‘familiar’ to him. The series stops when he cannot find objects which invite a new (unfamiliar) dialogue. His examination of objects, material and surfaces is lifelong and individual. In Bainbridge’s paper collages (2010 - 2014), the original attraction of the material for Bainbridge was the quality of the printed pages and the ability to produce subtle differences in colour and form. Equally, with Bainbridge’s sculptures made with synthetic fur (begun in 1984) the focus was on surface. Many sculptures in this new body of work are transparent. It means we cannot physically enter the space but we can see into some of them. They are concealing and revealing. The common thread is the artist’s ability to look in order to understand material qualities and then to apply self-invented logic to make unique work.

 

Bainbridge was reminded of Joseph Beuys’ performance Explaining pictures to a dead hare (1965) when he made Asian Artisan (2021) using a seated figure of a craftsman made in ceramic. In Beuys’ solo performance, he walked around a gallery for three hours covered in honey and gold leaf, holding a hare like a baby and whispering inaudibly to it.

 

“…Honey on my head of course has to do with thought. While humans do not have the ability to produce honey, they do have the ability to think, to produce ideas…Honey is an undoubtedly living substance - human thoughts can also become alive. On the other hand, intellectualizing can be deadly to thought: one can talk one’s mind to death in politics or in academia.”[6]

 

Bainbridge covered the ceramic figurine’s head in gold leaf, acknowledging that formally the gold complimented the green of the vase below, and knowing that the application of gold has spiritual significance in Asian countries. It was, however, mostly to test out another self-declared-dare, “can I really do this?”[7]

 

 

- Olivia Bax, October 2021

 

 

 

 

Olivia Bax (Singapore, 1988, lives and works in London). She studied at Byam Shaw School of Art, London (2010) and Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, London (2016). Her works have been shown in solo and group shows at: Standpoint Gallery, London, 2021; Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, Penzance, 2021; Drawing Room, London, 2021; Ribot, Milan, 2020;  Lily Brooke Gallery, London,2018; Saatchi Gallery, London, 2018 and 2015; Christian Larsen Gallery, Stockholm, 2017; Academy of Visual Arts, HKBU, Hong Kong, 2017; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2016. Prizes include: Mark Tanner Sculpture Award, London, 2019; Kenneth Armitage Young Sculptor Prize, London, 2016.