Carol and Richard
Selfridge are ceramic artists
working collaboratively in Edmonton, Canada
living solely from their ceramic work for
the past 25 years. Their illusionistic majolica
and wood fired stoneware has been exhibited
nationally and internationally in over 100
juried and invitational exhibitions over the
past two decades.
The Selfridges’s way of creating the
large illusionistic pots could best be termed
constructivist with ready-mades. They make
round and oval disks by press moulding, which
are then cut and altered, attacked and joined
to form segmented pots. By using ovals cut
on the bias, they can get gestural pots with
a lot of movement. They look much like in
a painting by Matisse, Braque or Picasso.
With their cut down rim and slightly comic
handles, they become a kind of spirited caricature
of historic ‘real’ pots.
Carol
and Richard are interested in painting flat
things to look round and round things to look
flat. These pots are about perception, that
is, those visual clues that let us know the
nature and dimension of things. With colour,
pattern, figure and ground, shading, silhouette
and by using many ‘universal referents’,
they create visual gaps that the viewer fills
up with their own constructed reality.
Selected Recent Juried Exhibitions
and Awards
‘Millennium Platter Exhibition’
2000 Summer Olympics, Sydney, Australia.
‘Sidney Myer International Ceramics
Award’ Shepparton, Australia.
‘Monarch National Ceramic Competition’
Florence, Alabama.
‘XIV Biennale Internationale de Ceramic
Competition’ San Angelo, Texas.
‘Fletcher Challenge International Ceramic
Award’ Auckland, New Zealand.
‘Orton International Cone Box Show’
Baker University, Baldwin, Kansas.
Selected Public and Private Collections
The Right Honourable Jean Chretien, Prime
Minister of Canada
Claridge Collection, (Bronfman)
His Imperial Highness, Prince Takamado of
Japan
Burlington Art Center, Burlington Ontario
Alberta Foundation For The Arts
Steelcase Corporation
British Petroleum
The Right Honourable Joe Clark and Maureen
McTeer
