Philip Beesley and Neil Forrest
Presented at the ACSA Conference,
Istanbul 2001
University of Waterloo and Nova Scotia College of Art and Design
Philip Beesley and Neil Forrest present the position
that ornament has a refreshed role to play in contemporary expression.
To explore a return to informed ornament, we concentrate on a new
ceramic project titled Hiving Mesh by Neil Forrest. In Hiving Mesh,
Forrest has constructed an architectural screen, a work of ornament.
Hiving Mesh draws upon Islamic ornamental tradition and at the same
time inflects these sources with states of a contemporary psyche.
Neil Forrest's work focuses on expanding, limitless
systems that function as ornament. These expanding systems are rooted
in pattern-making. As a ceramist, Neil Forrest has long been fascinated
by two traditions in Islamic art, the Iznik ceramics of the Ottoman
period, which present curvilinear vegetal patterns, and the earlier
'girih' style (Persian for 'knot'), a highly formal mode based on
Persian interlocking star-and-polygon geometries. Both the 'girih'
and Iznik modes inform Hiving Mesh. Using texts from this past century's
streams of surrealism and psychoanalysis, this essay undertakes
to find a refreshed relationship with these historic traditions.
