Ursula Morley-Price, Turning 80
5 November 2016 – 5 January 2017
Ursula-Morley-Price. White Round Blade Form, 2016, grès, h. 14 x 29 cm. Photo Philippe Mazère
For the third time at the Galerie de l’Ancienne Poste, the artist franco british Ursula Morley-Price, is showing her most recent sculptures, eighteen in all, which clearly shows at her age she is the master of her Art.
Faithful to her ceramic forms which suggest movement, she revisits the Flange Forms of the year 2000, after which in 2014 she developed the Twist Forms for her solo show at the Galerie de l’Ancienne Poste. “ I have created Pod and Round Blade Forms, where life of the simple blades begins at the center of the sculpture, and develops into large blades around the rim of the ceramic, and become smaller again as they rut themselves at the foot of the sculpture. Life busts forth and takes root.”, the artist comments.
Over the past 55 years Ursula Morley-Price has made many solo exhibitions, both in Europ and USA. In 2013 she had a retrospective at Museum of Modern Art at Troyes. Her work is in numerous private and public collections, which include the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art-MoMA in New York, the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris and the Cité de la Céramique in Sèvres.
One might think that at the venerable age of eighty, which the artist proudly embraces, Ursula Morley-Price would have done it all, said it all, experienced it all, and that stoneware, her favourite clay, would hold no secrets for her, but it is nothing of the sort. Her art keeps evolving, on the contrary, becoming more refined and more powerful with time. Slowly, steadily. “Just like an actor shaping their art, I move forward, I try new things then move even further, and I am ever evolving ,all the while remaining myself. My works get bigger and bigger, but also more and more complex”, the ceramist explains with as much enthusiasm and energy as ever, just a few weeks before the opening of her third personal exhibition at the Galerie de l’Ancienne Poste in Toucy, where she is presenting eighteen new pieces that took her a year and a half to complete.
Guillaume Morel
Journalist, art critic
From the catalogue of the exhibition
A selection of Ursula Morley-Price’s works
Galerie de l'Ancienne Poste