Ursula Morley-Price

Recent works

8 November 2014 –  8 January 2015

Preview the saturday 8th of November 2014 from 6 pm in the presence of the artist.

Exposition Ursula Morley-Price - céramiques d'Ursula Morley-Price - galerie de céramique contemporaine

Ursula Morley-Price, Tall Brown Wip Twist Form. 2014, grès, h. 29 x 23 cm. Photo Philippe Mazère.

The Galerie de l’Ancienne Poste presents the long awaited event of 2014 : fifteen new sculptures which represent the second personal exhibition of Ursula Morley-Price, British artist living in France since the 70s. Here Ursula Morley-Price develops her formal expression inspired particularly by the Large Twist Form which caused a sensation last year at the Modern Art Museum of Troyes (Aube), and which now figures in the museum’s collection.  Characterized by a movement of double revolution, the pieces once again bear witness to the immense talent of such a rare artist.

The beauty of Ursula’s pieces, born from this ambiguity itself – on the one hand her very rigorous, structured organization together with her great knowledge of clay, and on the other hand her way of insufflating them,perhaps unwittingly, with the breath of life, which (in the eye of the beholder) seems to make quiver the apparently fragile skin of these “things” frozen in an attitude ready to take flight. The opening of its corolla seems to accelerate as in a nature documentary. The translation of this flight into stoneware, would prove to be a long one. From the debut in the virtuosity of forms, by progressing to this gyratory movement which would propel such a helix, and give the sensation of an unfolding wing swaying in the wind, it would take an entire life-time to achieve. The clay obtained in her hands is so fine that it is almost transparent, like the texture of linen or cigarette papers. […]Based on a hollow (as the central interior of each piece is indeed a hollow) she builds its frame by attaching to its edges a succession of fine flanges which she mounts by stretching them outward. She creates fullness from emptiness. Patiently, painstakingly she builds her ‟skeleton” by adding little bit of coil by little bit. Her modelling is truly the result of a powerful will to construct. […] The imagination  gallops. In fact, a work of Ursula speaks to us like the living body it is.

Elisabeth Védrenne
Art critic
Extract from « Retrospective Ursula Morley-Price », exhibition catalogue, published with the Troyes Museum of Modern Art, 2013.

A selection of Ursula Morley-Price’s works