Spode: Tip: Pallet

This artwork featured in The Precious Clay (2019).

Chell has composed these works on small versions of the ubiquitous wooded Euro pallet, universally used in trade. By using the language of porcelain, he adds value directly onto the surface of the almost worthless pallet. He has introduced a set of images in oval frames that are reminiscent of Claude Glass, a viewing tool used by 18th century landscape lovers. Instead of decorative vistas, they depict vast dumps and waste heaps, as here with the large spoil mountain of porcelain clay near St Austell, Cornwall, known as ‘Sky Tip’ or ‘The Cornish Alps’. These dumps speak of surplus and deficit, overproduction and over-trading.

Image: Edward Chell, Spode: Tip: Pallet, acrylic, lacquer and gesso on Euro pallet, 2018. Image courtesy the artist. 

 

 

About the artist

Edward Chell

Edward Chell exhibited in The Precious Clay, Museum of Royal Worcester, 2019, and Synthetic Landscapes, Weston Park; Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery, 2017.

Image: Edward Chell, Untitled Object I (Sky Tip, St Austell), 2018. Painted euro transport pallet. Courtesy the artist.