Location: 1

Title: Basking Denim Noise, 2014.

Collection of the Art Gallery of Burlington

Purchased with funds raised by the Collection Committee, 2014.

33.6 x 61.0 x 39.3 cm

Material: Thrown and hand-built paper clay, paint.

Sale Price: NFS

Bio:

Christopher Reid Flock began a ceramic mentorship with Canadian ceramist Kayo O'Young in 1997 followed by ceramic studies at Sheridan College School of Ceramic Design. In 1999, Flock moved to Japan initiating a self-guided cultural and studio emersion. Returning to Canada in 2009, Flock unpacked the ten years of study through numerous community activities, national and international exhibitions.

In 2014, Flock initiated a world first with Siemens Canada and Mohawk College in CT scanning a 6000BCE Jomon-yaki vessel. Employing traditional clay processes with rapid prototyping he questioned process and cultural engagement from a colonial perspective with historical clay artifact as institutional plaything.

A short-listed candidate for the permanent outdoor ceramic sculpture, Gardiner Museum, Recipient of the 2014 Winifred Shantz Award for Ceramics, the 2015 Founders Award at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition, through the support of three Canada Council for the Arts grants, and an MFA in 2022, Flock continues to push the clay envelope.

His work can be found in international private collections, the Canadian Embassy in Paris, France, the permanent collection at the Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taiwan, the Residence of the Prime Minister of Canada, Permanent collection at the Clay and Glass Gallery Waterloo, Canada, and the Art Gallery of Burlington, Burlington, Canada.

Artist Statement:

I have reified my notion of clay as a physical piece— a basking clay form linked to my malleable processes. Precarious in isolation, momentarily caught in a literal sense of materiality, this figurative gesture leans into vulnerability. I have reached into “potentiality” and trusted my grip. From that reach I present the chaotic as form. Here, I emulate creative play and the agency of possibility. This provides a visual and auditory context into how and where I am in the present. I see this as a reorientation of the self-conscious— steeped in an appeal to the phenomenal. Because it is phenomenal that I now stand here, in this place l as the next generation of what, where, and why we progress with(in). This line of process made me feel small. Not in a ferocious self-sabotage way, but because this creative act forced me to embrace vulnerability. Vulnerable to change in material, scale, and a general perception of things taken and others discarded. That our minds are capable, especially at a young age, to remove what you need and then discard (or turn away from) the rest I felt important to hit. And as a potter, as a human, this is how and where new ideas form. Above all, clay (land itself) has helped me to be malleable

Website: www.studioreid.com