Plates

📖 The Scoop

Tom Humphreys—Plates is an artist's book documenting works produced between 2009 and 2016 using industrially manufactured plates as a support medium. This extensive volume reproduces four hundred and twenty works from this series at a one-to-one scale, in precisely rendered photographs.

The surfaces of the plates incorporate painted glazes and ceramic transfers that are applied by the artist before the plates are refired in a kiln. Imagery is hand-drawn or applied using transfers that incorporate the artist's own photography and generic found material. Like a sketch, each work results from a simple gesture. With silhouettes and scenes from everyday life, the plates play with innumerable combinations of image and subject matter. Joining artisanal craft and digital production, the works conflate the banality of a collection of objects without pedigree with the ambition of the collection itself, further exploring the politics of art production, presentation, and consumption.

The book follows the exhibition “Under the Wing” at the independent art space Forde in Geneva (February 19–March 26, 2017), curated by Nicolas Brühlart and Sylvain Menétrey. The illustrated works have been included in many other exhibitions, including “Over you / you,” 31st Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, 2015; “Warm Math,” Balice Hertling, New York, 2014; “Casa Particular,” Rob Tufnell, London, 2014; “Holes” (with Lucie Stahl), What Pipeline, Detroit, 2013; “Chez Michel,” Dingum, Berlin, 2013; “Vertical Club,” Bortalami Gallery, New York, 2013; and “Flaca – Tom Humphreys,” Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, 2011.

Copublished with Forde, Geneva

Genre: Art / Individual Artists / Artists' Books (fancy, right?)