Hornsey Library Gallery: "Shattered".

Shattered is an exhibition of six-foot-high vases (or ‘sic foor hight vaess’, as I just attempted to type. I’m pretty tired today, sorry. Also, hello, I’m Nadine. Hi), that have been pushed over, attacked with a motorised saw, detonated in ‘controlled explosions’, had concrete dropped on to them, and then been reconstituted with almost invisible filler but gloriously stark jagged edges, glaring gaps, and a delicately warped, leaning effect.



It is an exploration of domestic violence, virginity culture, representations of the female body, Iran, and Green Lanes, which also uses smaller, unsmashed dishes, and video on the Iranian way to eat a pomegranate to highlight the smaller cultural differences and broader cultural similarities (that hydra-headed sexual double standard) between Esfahan and North London.

One smashed vase depicts female faces and bodies in a style reminiscent of Matisse’s Dance, but the eponymous shattered form of the portraits renders rather ambiguous the joyous-seeming dancing women. Another is written all across the exposed inside with the narratives of Iranian and British survivors of sexual violence. The fragmented writing looks like a rosetta stone.


The works also feature gold-embossed birds in the style of a medieval tapestry, almost, detailed representation of elaborate rugs in the background of domestic scenes, and much depiction of women in a manner that recalls both Marjane Satrapi and Posy Simmonds, not as victims or types or heroines but individuals.

The size and the shattered form of the vases evokes the rather arbitrary generic distinction between sculpture and ceramics, a distinction that is so crashingly gendered it seems almost too painfully obvious to mention. Next: gathering, as good as hunting!

The artist, Claudia Clare, who in the interests of full disclosure I should really mention is my aunt, blogs at 'The C Word', which we've linked to at the side. The exhibition is at Hornsey Library until Friday.