Since it’s establishment in 2014, Taste Contemporary has championed ceramic art, recognising and showcasing the work of both established and emerging artists and building a strong collector market for ceramics in Switzerland and beyond. Over this period the medium of clay has been embraced by the wider art market and is increasingly evident at major art fairs and in contemporary art galleries. Now this same market is showing an increasing interest in textiles. Five Cubed presents the work of a select group of international artists working in both disciplines. Responding to the industrial setting of La Fonderie Kugler, a former tap foundry in Geneva, it sees a number of distinct artistic voices engage in an exciting dialogue within its gritty interior, presenting strong, bold and ambitious works that reflect the confidence and maturity currently existing within the Contemporary Craft Movement.

Gallery artists Philip Eglin, Aneta Regel and Virginia Leonard - now familiar to Geneva audiences - are joined by new artists to the gallery, Mary O’Malley and Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl. Eglin’s large scale vessel and bucket forms challenge the viewer while Leonard’s painterly approach is evident in her intensely emotional and emotive sculptural works. Utilising colour in a very different way, the industrial forms of Bodilsen Kaldahl’s work respond directly to the architecture of the building while Regel’s textured life size pieces bring strong natural elements into the space. O’Mally takes a much more socio-political stance as she looks at the history of Chinese export ware through a very humerous 21st Century lens.

These five ceramic artists are placed in dialogue with five equally diverse textile artists. Kari Dyrdal and Ptolemy Mann, both presented by Taste Contemporary at artgenéve 2019, work with colour, but in very different ways; Dyrdal’s weaving has a sculptural and viseral presence in contrast to Mann’s minimalist painterly works. Colour and pattern are also to the forefront of young artist Laura Angell’s work that deals with issues of anxiety and identity. Balancing this are the more tonal compositions of Matthew Harris and Michael Brennand Wood. Concerned primarily with abstract imagery and mark making, Harris makes work that employs painting, cutting and hand stitching, while Brennand Wood layers materials in constructions that deal with notions of decoration, politics and society.

In celebrating the extraordinary world of contemporary ceramics and textiles, Five Cubed presents work that is expressive and emotional, playful and satirical, complex and unexpected. It is an opportunity to celebrate their rise to prominence within the art market and an opportunity for Taste Contemporary to celebrate a well-deserved milestone.