Claire Partington: Tea and post-colonial retribution

For some time now, London-based ceramic sculptor Claire Partington has been examining the intersections between historical English and continental ceramic figures and the empires that loved them. With an early apprenticeship in the stacks at the Victoria and Albert Museum and elsewhere, Partington sites her mock-Meissen/Staffordshire/Sevres beings within porcelain-world pilgrimage sites such as Musee Ariana in Geneva; the d'Ursel and Gaasbeek castles in Belgium; the Bernardaud (china factory) Foundation in Limoges and, recently in her North American debut, at Seattle Art Museum and nearby Winston Wachter Gallery.