CARINA CISCATO
Following her training in Industrial Design, Brazilian ceramicist Carina Ciscato was introduced to studio pottery in Krefeld, Germany, where she spent one year working alongside Marietta Cremer in her studio. Upon her return to Brazil, Ciscato undertook an apprenticeship with Lucia Ramenzoni, one of Sao Paulo’s leading ceramicists. Following six years under Ramenzoni’s tutelage, Ciscato began showing her work in local galleries. Her relocation to London in 1999 saw Ciscato become assistant to the studio of Julian Stair and Edmund de Waal. Ciscato established her London studio in 2003 in Vanguard Court, South London, where she works today. Since 2001, Ciscato has participated in numerous group shows at prestigious locations in London, including Royal College of Art, Gallery Besson, the Craft Council’s Collect art fair and Chelsea Craft Fair, alongside shows in Japan, Brazil, Europe and across the UK, with notable exhibitions in Cornwall’s Leach Pottery and Porthminster Gallery. Her work is enshrined within the V&A Museum collection and the Devonshire collection, as well as significant private collections internationally.
Ciscato works primarily in porcelain, exploring the limits of her material through throwing on the wheel then later tearing, cutting, folding and stretching to assemble her pieces. Due to its duality of strength and fragility, utilising porcelain allows Ciscato to materially explore form, spatial perception and structure in new and challenging ways. Carefully conceived, her spontaneous and fluid works speak of their process, which is exposed and revealed through their layered construction and exhibition of subtle marks, which are gently applied either on the wheel or when the clay has reached a leather-hard stage. Ciscato’s work provides critical insight into our perception of an object, its shapes and composition, discovering a hidden beauty beyond function and predictability and questions space and volume, function and purpose, balance and fragility.
Ciscato works primarily in porcelain, exploring the limits of her material through throwing on the wheel then later tearing, cutting, folding and stretching to assemble her pieces. Due to its duality of strength and fragility, utilising porcelain allows Ciscato to materially explore form, spatial perception and structure in new and challenging ways. Carefully conceived, her spontaneous and fluid works speak of their process, which is exposed and revealed through their layered construction and exhibition of subtle marks, which are gently applied either on the wheel or when the clay has reached a leather-hard stage. Ciscato’s work provides critical insight into our perception of an object, its shapes and composition, discovering a hidden beauty beyond function and predictability and questions space and volume, function and purpose, balance and fragility.
