2009 Finalist
Creator: Neil Forrest
Nominator: Peter Henry
Seconders: Alex Livingston, Glen R. Brown
Neil Forrest’s Mandible is an innovative, large-scale ceramic sculpture suspended from the gallery ceiling by an integrated tensile system. Its use of lead glazed stoneware on such an impressive scale immediately engages the viewer and challenges traditional boundaries between craft, architecture and fine art. Forrest’s lengthy, sophisticated involvement with ceramic theory and practice and his exploration of biomorphic forms and natural systems of organization (such as rhizomes and hiving activities), has led him to create multi-part projects, of which Mandible is the most recent and, arguably, most accomplished: a sculptural installation with a fascinating, unsettling presence, whose surfaces, rich hues and organic references elicit a complex, visceral response from the viewer.
Brief bio: Neil Forrest is currently Head of Ceramics at NSCAD University, where he has taught since the 1980s. Educated at York University and Sheridan College in Toronto, Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and Alfred University in New York, Forrest has gained an international recognition for integrating ceramic practice into architectural, design and fine art practices. Mandible was exhibited in the exhibition “Perils of the Sublime” in Arizona State University Architecture Design Gallery in 2009.
