Rosa NGUYEN

View in collection Ceramic artist Rosa Nguyen (b.1960) is of French Vietnamese parentage and was born in London. She makes figurative ceramic sculpture based on animal forms. She trained at Middlesex University and completed her studies in 1980. Before commencing post-graduate studies at the Royal College of Art, she travelled to India and Nepal and visited Ladahk. Her travels helped to reinforce her Asian roots and identity and provided inspiration for future work. She made drawings on her travels and it remains an important part of her working method. At the Royal College, she made work with an emphasis on surface design: platters and dish forms with drawn figurative and animal forms. She also experimented with raku firing. After leaving the Royal College, she received a Crafts Council Setting Up Grant and worked at the 4011/2 workshops in South London where she made large pieces, which were raku fired. She has also worked to commission making portraits of pets. Travelling has become an important part of her life and she has visited Vietnam (1991). The fashion designer Ally Capellino asked her to make ceramic jewellery, which was a new departure for her (1990s). This allowed her to use her studies of seeds, pods, bones and flowers. More recently, she has taken up botanical and natural forms again. Small fruit and seed forms contrast with larger organic forms. She uses a range of clay bodies and paints the forms with simple red and white slips. Some are left unglazed; others are painted with washes of oxides. Matt white and crystalline glazes and an iridescent black glaze are also used. Some animal figures are left open as if emptied of their interior space. There is freeness in the process of drawing that applies to the process of making which imbues many of her pieces with expressive, abstract qualities. The surfaces of the animal figures are often incised and drawn on. Rough and grainy textures and pierced and protruding marks are a feature of the smaller, botanical and other forms. She has shown her work in many exhibitions in Britain including The New Spirit of Craft and Design (1989) and The Raw and the Cooked (1993/1994). In 1995, she undertook a residency at Aberystwyth when the collection acquired an example of her work. She works as a visiting lecturer and part-time lecturer at the Camberwell College of art and others. With a long-standing interest in Animist and Oriental philosophies and taking inspiration from discrete arts such as gardening, Japanese art of Ikebana flower arranging and astronomy – Rosa’s work evokes a contemplative aesthetic and a deep- rooted spiritual connection with nature.

Details

• Dates: 1960-