#Life in pieces wizard fingers series#

In another work a collection of hands are bound together with one continuous thread, and yet although they are restricted in movement, there is a tenuousness involved at any moment one of the hands could let go and the whole structure could collapse. As well as the scampering fingers in her Tea Party works, which create a sense of aliveness, there is a sense of unpredictability as stacked plates form teetering towers and threaten to tip over. Appropriately, Baranga has described the mouth as metaphorical ‘border between the inner body and the external environment surrounding it’.īaranga’s work is also characterised by a sense of movement and dynamism. Again the distinction between ‘animate’ and ‘inanimate’ is disrupted and the artwork is feeling and responding to itself and its environment. Baranga’s use of sensual organs such as fingers and mouths also extend to other artworks, where she has covered a gallery wall with hundreds of palms and in another instance multiple mouths. In making her work she asked herself, ‘If a milk jug pinches a kettle, how does its flesh feel like? How can I convey this feeling?’ The sensation and feeling is then something that we, as viewers, experience vicariously through these objects. The dishes’ fingers are pushed into the desserts, into the whipped cream’. Baranga says, ‘the whipped cream cakes are hedonistic and sensual symbolising abundance. Although we cannot touch the sculptures ourselves, the objects freely touch and interact with each other. With the subject matter of food, hands and mouths, there is a distinct sensuality and tactility about Baranga’s work.

As viewers, we are enticed and tantalised by the sweets and desserts on offer, and compelled to partake in these objects, and yet our desires are also thwarted by the sense of danger present we feel obliged to keep some distance, almost as if a mouth might bite us before we bite the dessert, or verbally refuse our approach. Again a tension is set up between subject and object. In her Tea Party installations, she also features a range of cupcakes, sponge cakes and pies, with mouths, some open with bared teeth and exploring tongues, some closed but poised to open at any moment. This act of personification extends to other objects in Baranga’s visual vocabulary. Thus ‘craft’ became ‘art’, ‘still’ became ‘alive’, ‘passive’ became ‘active’, and each of these objects could ‘decide whether to use itself, whether to allow me to use it, or whether to run away’.

#Life in pieces wizard fingers series#

From this discomfort, she began her series of surreal tea set crockery, where utilitarian objects designated for specific purposes, such as plates, cups and milk jugs, were transformed by way of fingers and mouths into active agents who had choice over their own identity. She says when she first started her ceramic studies that she was conscious of not fitting neatly into either context, ‘neither here nor there’. Implicit in Baranga’s work is an age-old question of art vs craft or in this case, art vs ceramics. Thus ‘craft’ became ‘art’, ‘still’ became ‘alive’, ‘passive’ became. More recently, she has extended her practice to include a variety of other strange figurative works. By giving human features to everyday objects she gives them an identity beyond their original intention and transforms them into characters who create their own amusing narratives. With their probing tongues and wandering fingers, Ronit Baranga’s sculptures are immediately recognisable for their mischievous, playful quality.