Tree House: Jeremy Hatch

April 9 to May 28, 2006

Mutal Tower Gallery

JEREMY HATCH: TREE HOUSE

Tree House is an exhibition consisting of a sculpture of a life-size apple tree with a tree house, made of porcelain. Artists have often been inspired by the world of children and by nature. In this installation, artist Jeremy Hatch references both and much more as well.

Porcelain is a type of hard semi-translucent ceramic generally fired at a higher temperature than glazed earthenware, or stoneware pottery. It is white, but mildly translucent and can be decorated to provide colour. It is usually associated with delicate objects and is thought of within the craft and art communities as something fragile and exquisite. Yet porcelain is also very strong and durable. It has utilitarian capabilities and has been adapted for industrial and other pragmatic purposes. It is this disjunction, or dialectic, within the medium itself that has also inspired the artist.

Tree House - porcelain, steel armature

The tree house was a monumental undertaking for the artist. To create this work he made approximately 30 separate plaster molds of a tree that were then cast in porcelain. The porcelain sections are then arranged over an interior steel armature that supports the work. All in all, it took almost one full year to create.

Hatch’s work is enfused on many levels with sly and articulate humour. In an earlier work, a life-size children’s swing-set that was also made of porcelain, he subverted the expectations of what was handmade versus what was mass-produced. In replicating a mass-produced, factory-made object in porcelain, he elevated it to the realm of “fine art”. While his sculpture was – in certain respects –

exactly like the object that he cast from, it was the material and the fact that it was handmade that created the difference in how it was regarded and characterized.

In Tree House he further challenges our assumptions and expectations. In this case, the use of porcelain to create a replication of something from the natural world creates a dialectic referencing mass production and the vulnerability of nature. The tree and tree house have been “immortalized” - they are cast, frozen in time. Yet they are fragile and vulnerable to breakage and if toppled, would shatter into a million pieces. In this way, Hatch’s work can be read as a poignant evocation of the fragility of our childhood memories and nostalgia for our past – our “roots” if you will.

This multilayered and impressive installation has wide-ranging appeal to a diverse audience. Hatch’s Tree House celebrates a sense of freedom, of play and also reminds us of the potential of childhood and of dreams – providing we try creative means of realizing them.

Jeremy Hatch is a ceramicist and sculptor who holds a BFA from Emily Carr Institute and an MFA at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. He has attended residencies and exhibited his work throughout Canada and the United States. Jeremy currently employs a ceramic process of slip-casting porcelain to produce large unglazed sculptural installations. He has expanded his material investigations to incorporate rubber, plastic and fiberglass into his ceramic work. Hatch was the recipient of British Columbia’s 2005 Visual Arts Development Awards.

The Gallery and artist acknowledges the support of the British Columbia Arts Council for Jeremy Hatch's exhibition project.