Vipoo Srivilasa: รูป รส เรื่อง Roop-Rote-Ruang (Taste-Touch-Tell)

14 June – 26 July 2008

Vipoo Srivilasa works mostly in ceramics, exploring similarities between the cultures of his native Thailand and Australia, his adoptive home. Using blue and white glazes, he creates complex narratives through highly decorated images applied to the surfaces of ceramic forms. His work requires an intimacy in which the key elements of the drama are often found in unusual places within the forms themselves.

Vipoo Srivilasa’s upcoming project รูป รส เรื่อง Roop – Rote – Ruang (Taste – Touch – Tell) will take the form of both an exhibition at Gallery 4A and a series of dinner parties, hosted by the artist, at various private residences in Sydney and held throughout June. The gallery exhibition will focus on environmental issues such as coral reef damage. This will include a series of blue and white, intricately decorated ceramic hands. Visitors will also participate in the creation process by building their own pieces of coral from clay provided in the gallery. Those coral pieces will gradually come together to form a coral reef, growing larger as more people participate in the project.

Over dinner, Srivilasa will present a new ceramic dinner set over a four-course meal. The work will unfold as the meal is consumed. Images will gradually be exposed on bowls or plates and the full narrative will reveal itself as the dinner comes to its conclusion.

Through each element of รูป รส เรื่อง Roop – Rote – Ruang, Srivilasa allows his audience to experience his work on many levels. He embraces the Buddhist concept of “ayatana”, or the six channels of awareness. This means that sight (eyes), taste (tongue), smell (nose), hearing (ears), touch (hand) and mindfulness are all engaged. The artist is interested in creating opportunities for sharing between complete strangers and creating different, social ways of exploring complex ideas of his cross-cultural experience.

With thanks for Clayworks for the supply for clay for the exhibition.

Vipoo Srivilasa was born in Bangkok, Thailand and arrived in Australia in 1997. Since arriving in Australia he has developed a practice that is ceramics-based but with a strong social context, which can be seen in the many workshops he has developed with children.