Seep Fields at A-B Projects, Los Angeles, CA
September 7 - 29, 2019
Featuring for the first time the Mourning Ware body of work, which explores relationships between personal, planetary, and historical protocols of grieving. Early references for this series include mourning rituals from the Victorian era—a time which witnessed the expansion and domination of the Industrial Revolution. These rituals involved women’s black mourning wear, which was gradually and progressively inflected with lighter patterns over periods of months or years as a means to mark and externalize a transition “through” grief. In Mayer’s exhibition, Seep Fields, discarded synthetic rubber inner tubes are shown in conjunction with a series of manganese-saturated ceramic mourning ware that are embedded with fragments of crushed “fine china” she inherited from her family. As Mayer works with this porcelain, it becomes flecks of dust that are scattered, embedded, dispersed, and blown away. Like ash, these tiny particles will never be completely obliterated. Their material properties reflect Mayer’s experience of mourning and the ways in which behavioral, psychological and environmental patterns are passed from one generation to the next. When it comes to mourning our dramatically changing climate, Mayer observes a distinct lack of public, visible protocol. She uses a sculptural investigation of her personal grief as a corollary to understanding and experiencing our global grief. For Mayer, the personal and the planetary are inextricably connected and one will always seep into the other.
On September 28, Mayer conducted the inaugural State of Ceramics discussion at A-B Projects. Mayer’s presentation and ensuing discussion focused upon the intersection of ceramics and grief, and embodied practices of making. Los Angeles-based artist Julia Haft-Candell introduced and moderated the discussion.
