By By Shahab Ansari
CERAMICS is about clay and clay is about life, one of the four basic elements, Earth, Water, Wind and Fire.
Ceramics is the most neglected genre of art in this part of world. A very few encouraging events related to ceramics take place here. This was the general consensus among the artists, young and world renowned alike, at a group show, which opened at the Vogue Art Gallery, MM Alam Road on Friday evening.
The show was an opportunity for the ceramics fans who crave to see a good work of ceramics out of NCA. The artists who had brought in their latest and brilliant creations for the art lovers included the pioneers in the art of ceramics Masood Kohari, Sheherezade Alam, Jamil Hussain, youngsters like Salman Ikram, Sadaf Jamali and Fahad Alam Khaki. The show is a mesmerizing display of the power of clay and how it can captivate its audience if transformed into masterpieces of art.
According to young ceramist, Salman Ikram, ‘It’s the most difficult form of art and it has its own character. A ceramic artist actually goes through the process of creation, the real creation in the true sense of the word and experiences all the pangs of birth like a mother does while carving a piece of ceramics from the clay”.
Sheherezade Alam commented, “Clay (earth) is a very strange entity and it’s very difficult to make friends with it. Nevertheless, its also the universal truth that we the humans relate with earth (clay) but keep running away from it land its like running away from our own roots thus our relation is estranged. Earth is one of the four vital and basic elements of the creation like water, wind and fire and therefore, working in clay is quite difficult”. She admitted that ceramics has been ignored and it was about time that we should promote this most impressive and inspiring genre of art. She said that she was in the final stages of setting g up a ‘Centre for Traditional Arts for children in Lahore, Jahan-ara-Jahan, named after her young daughter who was murdered at the age of 24.
The brilliant creations by the other artists like Masood Khori, Salman Ikram, Jamil Hussain, Fahad Alam Khaki and Sadaf Jamil were highly appreciated by a sizeable crowd of art lovers and artists who had converged at the inauguration of this group show.