Carol McNicoll, Jacqueline Poncelet, Sam Scott, 'Ideal Home'

About

The exuberant Carol McNicoll?s decorative and functional ceramics are always conceived as domestic objects. She explains ?for me the home is both the most demanding and the most exciting environment in which to
place work?. Revelling in colour and pattern she salvages ?strange and wonderful junk? gathered from charity shops, markets, even skips, to give a razor sharp, witty social commentary. ?I use my work to rant, I hope in an entertaining way, about the issues that both annoy and amuse me.? Currently, these issues are the British Army?s ongoing, but less talked about, involvement in international conflicts. Florally patterned ceramic soldiers parade around a kitsch brass plate, one wears a large wooden flower on his head, and others stalk a chicken-wire bowl. Like Martha Rosler, McNicoll contrasts conflict and comfort to bring
the war home.

Jacqueline Poncelet concentrates on the home as an intensely personal place, with close ties to the subconscious. She will show a series of rhythmically patterned abstract paintings influenced by Bryn Ogwyr, the home she shares with Anthony Stokes in the Welsh Valleys. In Poncelet?s own words, these paintings ?seem to come from my relationship to the house, with its simplicity, its Welsh blankets, photographs and views?. These inspirations are intuitive responses to her immediate surroundings, and the sensations felt by the artist during the brief, concentrated hours it takes to make her paintings are transferred through her work.

Furniture maker Sam Scott takes found materials and recycles
them into his utilitarian and colourful products. Summoning the spirit of the festival of Britain, and inspired by designers such as Piet Hein Eek, Scott re-uses the ?waste? that piles up in the corner of his workshop. He lets the relationship between individual materials take the lead in his furniture, saying ?I really like the idea of using a set form or design, whilst also allowing the choice of found materials to inform a product?s development?allowing the design to ultimately mutate into something entirely and radically different.?

This mix of personalities will produce an interior like no other, and in exploring their shared fascination with the domestic McNicoll, Poncelet and Scott create their ideal home.