Clay is a material with strong religious and spiritual connotations.
The Jewish dreidel – a spinning top with four sides, made from clay – has four Hebrew letters inscribed; Nun, Gimel, Hey and Shin, forming an acronym for the Hebrew saying “Nes Gadol Hayah Sham”, translated to “a great miracle happened here”, which relates to the miracle which Hanukkah is centered around.
Clay is associated with birth and death, and with everything that happens in-between.
This aspect of the material is present in the works of artist Harry Andersson, currently exhibited at Saskia Neuman Gallery in Stockholm.
In the first room, a series of urns are presented on a podium, clearly linked to archetypical iconography (including the traditional Medici and amphora urns), but here in a shape that is slightly warped and deliberately transformed. In an interview, Andersson explains:
“I have made vases before, inspired by Grayson Perry. Often when I don’t know where to begin, I make vases. I began painting with enamel paint, which I then scraped off, leaving only traces. In this case, I began making a vase inspired by an ancient one I had seen before, on top of a wall here in Stockholm, but I worked with the glaze to make it appear older, as though it has been marked by time.”
The inner room shows a series of busts, spread out on two parallel tables.
“The inspiration behind these busts are ornaments on buildings. I try not to imitate ornaments, but because I walk everywhere, I look at the facades and notice their ornaments. Sometimes a former stable has a horse on its façade, and of course angels are a recurring motif. Sometimes the faces have been scraped off, because they are so old. All of this, I included in my work, as well as the feeling that the facades also can look back at you. I would be walking around, in a state of anguish, and see all these ornaments. That’s how the busts came to be.”
The strongest piece in the installation is the flock of birds, seemingly coming out of the 1930s corner fireplace, which is the second time that Andersson has created a work depicting birds in this manner:
“It’s a delicate piece. It came out of a year I had when I was not in a good space. I thought a lot about freedom, and whether I was a good or bad person. I also thought about the end of the world and started reading the Bible. The piece is called ‘Look up, look up, Gabriel blows his horn’, which refers to when the archangel blows his horn to warn about the impending end of the world.
According to the Bible, when people don’t live according to the word of God, their actions are weighed on scales, good versus bad, and if you have done mostly bad things in your life, you’re denied access to heaven. The reason that people’s actions are measured in this way is that they are the only ones capable of going against God’s will (even though they shouldn’t). Birds – and nature – don’t. They are always good; they don’t have the ability to question.
When I presented the first piece I placed the birds on the wall, and so I knew that this time, I wanted them on the floor. It became natural for me to use the fireplace like a funeral place for birds.”
When speaking of his creative process, and in contrast to the emotional and spiritual themes of the pieces, Andersson is deliberately down-to-earth and matter of fact.
He talks about watching YouTube-videos to learn the craft, rather than (as is otherwise customary) about how he feels a certain affiliation with the material.
In this way, he aligns himself with Zygmunt Bauman’s critique of a “confessional society”, where everything needs to appear grounded in personal reasons and all events turned into a narrative to matter. It’s a refreshing take in a time when lines between artists and their works are supposed to be blurred and all artists are expected to want to express themselves through art.
Sometimes, a piece of clay is simply a piece of clay.
An urn is an urn, and a flock of birds is a flock of birds.
And that is how it should be.