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Painted ceramic busts, figures, and abstracted totems/vessels ranging in scale from table top to over life sized were exhibited alongside new works on paper.

The exhibition opened with a group of busts arranged together in two tiers. Reminiscent of a jury, a stadium crowd, people waiting at a bus stop, they looked at each other, at us, and out to the gallery bookshop and the city streets beyond. They were joined by a selection of works on paper; heads painted in quick, deft gestures. In the light of the airy upper exhibition gallery was a selection of small, painted clay figures that Silver describes as being like an action you do with the hand – figures swiftly modelled, fired, then painted on, the movement of the brush fusing with that of the hand and eye. The sculptures were grouped together on tables that had legs like people do, with large, lumpen feet. The effect was of matter coming into being, as though the very tables had life and spirit. The Warehouse hosted a group of abstracted clay totems/vessels which formed relationships with each other, with the space and with us moving around and between them, raising questions about what it is to look.

At once representation and process, Silver’s work captures the essential nature of both the body and the material in which it is worked. The exhibition spoke of human connection; of the process of looking and being and being looked at; of the intimacy of touch.

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Images: Ruth Clark