Eliza Au explores ornament through the built environment, ceramics, and design. Featuring Squaring the Circle, a new site-specific installation commissioned by the Crow Museum of Asian Art, this exhibition celebrates ornament and pattern. Structurally, Au foregrounds the fundamental component of architecture from tiles, blocks, and screens to the basic elements of lines and circles. Through repetition and a multiplication of forms, Au pays homage to a variety of sacred spaces, from Buddhist caves, to grottos, to houses of worship. According to Au, “Historically, architectural ornament within mosques drew a connection between infinite repetition and ideas of divinity; in contemporary architecture the fluid line, complexity and ornamentation have re-emerged, without explicit religious ideas, but utopic ideals about society.”
Through the Squaring the Circle installation and various other ceramic sculpture, Au seeks to address the close affinity between ornament and abstraction. Contrary to the notion of pattern for pattern’s sake, Au casts her clay as a meditative act, and explores pattern’s ability to create a spiritual atmosphere.
Mathematically precise, Au blends new and old technologies such as Rhino CAD 3D, the modeling system, with the ancient form of clay. In Au’s work, the pattern of ornamentation may hold cosmological or spiritual significance for the viewer. However, the patterns are generated through the aid of computer algorithms. Merging the decorative arts with science, Au illuminates the potential of ornament and architecture to ignite our imaginations.
This exhibition is part of the Texas Ties series dedicated to presenting artists with significant roots in Texas as part of their professional artistic journey.
About the Artist
Born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, Au received her MFA in 2009 from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. She attended artist residencies at the Studio at the Corning Museum of Glass in New York, the Pilchuck Glass School in Washington state, the Guldagergaard International Research Center in Skælskør in Denmark, and the Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China. From 2017 to 2019, she was a full-time faculty member of the Alfred-CAFA Design for Industry Program at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and an Alfred University Affiliate, in Beijing, China. Currently, she is Assistant Professor of Ceramics at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas.
Au’s work has been acquired by both private collectors and institutions, including the Victoria and Albert Museum.