Parallax Art Fair exhibition 1 - all done and dusted

Parallax Art Fair all done and dusted for the time being.  Of the tonnes of art on show,  my favourite I share here: Jayne Lloyd's 'Tea Cup'.  Consisting of blue ball-point pen on a polystyrene take-away cup.  In the blurb from the Parallax website Lloyd quotes Oscar Wilde:

"I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china."  It goes on to say "After finding a cup in a charity shop in Archway for 40p, which was adorned with the Willow design that the phrase refers to, Lloyd began to question what today's 'blue china' was  and if it was still something to live up to."


I studied in Stoke on Trent (I live fairly close by), and I have toured the Spode Museum and heard the story of the willow pattern.  As told by the tour guide - a long-time worker in the Spode factory - the willow pattern was a bit of whimsy; a romatic and largely fictional reflection on the East, as it was seen then. To own a piece of this pottery at the time was aspirational, but it has become so widespread as to be almost invisible; so familiar we don't even notice it.  That's why I love Lloyd's Tea Cup. She has drawn our attention to it, literally, and in doing so made a wonderfully ironic comment on value and aspiration today.

See the Parallax Art Fair blurb here


See Jayne Lloyd's blog here

Jump to Victoria Scholes's website