Nicole De Brabandere

These works refabricate Staffordshire transfer-printed wares form the early 19th century out of cardboard and colour print-outs on paper. Transfer-printed dinnerware reached new popularity and international circulation during the time of production, both in England and the colonies. The plates depict colonial imagery that coincides with Romantic aesthetic tropes of the ruin, the uncivilized and the natural.

By refabricating the display wares out of the temporary, disposable and inexpensive medium of paper print-outs, and with reference to the accordian form of children's paper dolls, I aim to interrogate and trouble the still very present legacy of Romanticism on contemporary subjectivities. The printed images are given dimension by cutting out and layering several copies onto an accordian structure, in a play with the anatomy of the plates between bowl, rim and the transfer-pronted image. By exposing the specificity of production in a new way I aim to make felt the made-ness of objects and degrade their affective alignment with an unchanging, Romantic ideal.

This approach to form was developed in relation to my research into the popularity, aesthetics and fabrication techniques of Staffordshire display objects of the early 19th century, and their influence on new concepts of subjectivity in the period. The paper is available here: 

http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/csrj/article/view/5075

'Arctic Scenery' Paper Plates (2009)

'Rose Series' Paper Plates (2009)

Installation View (2009)