Anton Cu Unjieng is a Filipino ceramist who trained with Tessy and Jon Pettyjohn at their workshop in Laguna, Philippines. Afterwards, he did his Bachelors in Visual Arts at the Australian National University, followed by a diploma in Art History at the University of British Columbia. He completed his Masters in Fine Arts at the Alberta College of Art and Design, now the Alberta University of the Arts. He is currently in the first year of his PhD in Art History at UBC.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My practice is influenced by the history of studio pottery and the decorative arts. Although my work is not always functional or decorative, the concept of the decorative is usually a guiding principle in it. For me, the decorative is a way of thinking about objects as relational so that a decorative effect is a kind of ecology resulting from the total relations established between objects (as well as users in the case of ‘functional’ work). In principle, such an effect is always provisional, resulting as it does from arrangement and therefore being subject to rearrangement.

May – July 2019