Schlomer Haus Gallery is thrilled to present Colin J Radcliffe’s new show, "Love Spoiled,” highlighting recent works in ceramic across a range of subjects from autobiographical figures, phones with intimate text messages, popper bottles, and condoms labeled with pithy sayings.
Today, homosocializing in digital space is how most young queer people cruise, network, build community, and discover friendships. “Love Spoiled” embodies the ambivalence of these relationships – to be generously spoiled with an overflow of love for or from a partner, yet also the looming expiration of a love that may itself go bad and spoil. Many of Colin’s own relationships began through first meeting someone digitally. Colin relies heavily on his phone for forming connections and establishing relationships, so much so that it has manifested physically in his work as honest records of selfies taken with a loved one, or private text messages exchanged between them.
Relationships are trials by fire, much like how ceramics are a literal trial by fire. Ceramics have a long history of usage as vessels and idols; physical objects that themselves contain or embody something, whether that be tangible or not. Humor is a driving force for him that has been a catalyst for healing from trauma. Alongside playful colors and forms, humor opens the door to address the difficult and often painful realities of heartbreak.
The pursuit of queer intimacy and connection, especially in the context of social media and dating apps, is the thread that connects and drives all Colin’s work. Longing for love is a universal experience, yet it is one that has historically, both culturally and systemically, been withheld from and denied towards queer people. There are still tremendous ingrained psychological and emotional hurdles that queer people face today in their personal and communal pursuits of intimacy, love, and connection, that permeate through their platonic, romantic, and sexual relationships. Through making work that challenges and represents contemporary queer relationships and digital dating culture, it will ideally open space to hold a mirror up to our own personal experiences, and give way to building healthier and more fruitful (and fruity) relationships.
Chronicling his own successes and failures in love, Colin’s autobiographical and often confessional work is a personal memory, an ode to a romantic, platonic, or sexual partner and our connection to one another (or lack thereof). Using the same hands that once caressed a lover or sent an intimate text message, Colin pours his (often unspoken) sentiments and memories of that person through touch into the piece that embodies them, and in doing so release those feelings and give space for healing...so that he can love anew, again and again.
