Barnaby Barford’s Pornographic Porcelain

Barnaby Barford art

I happen to be a fan of thought-provoking sculptural works with titles that add another layer to the piece, and I just found out about porcelain provocateur Barnaby Barford. The work of porcelain, ceramic, enamel paint, wood and other media above from Barford’s upcoming show Love Is at David Gill Galleries is called “How Else Am I Supposed to Learn?” In the piece below, a porcelain man with a copy of Anal Sex magazine whispers to a porcelain woman. It’s called: “You’d Do it If You Loved Me”. Well-played!

Barnaby Barford art

From his website:

Barnaby Barford is an artist who works primarily with ceramics to create unique narrative pieces. He works with both mass-market and antique found porcelain figurines, cutting up and exchanging elements or adding to them and repainting them, to create sculptures which are often sinister and sardonic but invariably humorous. With irony, he draws a portrait of our contemporary lives.

Barnaby Barford art

Of the new series, Barford says:

I’m exploring the difference between love and lust, and to a certain extent looking at what each means to us today. How love is beautiful, everlasting, charitable, heavenly, it is something we all strive for in life. Lust is momentary, sinful, selfish, sometimes brutal. I think more and more we mistake feelings of love with those of lust. I am not interested in only porn per se – and it comes in many forms rom reasonably pleasant to absolutely horrific – but I am interested in how we learn what relationships and sex are about, and in what order.

Barnaby Barford art

These are really interesting pieces. I’m grateful to Design Boom (which has a whole article with several more pictures) for putting Barford on my radar.