Box, 'Untitled', cardboard, stoneware, other media, made by Paul Astbury, London, 1980.

Sculptural work composed of a cardboard box of low, square form, clad with fired pieces of stoneware, and set on its side. The ceramic pieces are fixed to the box with screws, and a number of them are embellished with 'Araldite' adhesive, which has been custom-tinted with ink. The work also incorporates Sellotape, felt-tip pen, and paint. The base of the box, which forms the back of the piece when displayed, is largely undecorated, and bears the impressed potter's marks: 'P.J.A' and a separate curvilinear motif. As some of the ceramic pieces jut out beyond the side of the box, the work does not stand upright, but rests at an angle.

Paul Astbury writes: "With regards to the second impressed curvilinear mark..., it was intended to provide identity to the clay fragment denoting given energy. Much of the work done around that period was concerned with ideas relating to the Uncertainty Principle created by Heisenburg to underline uncertainty of where an electron might be at any given time, so upsetting the dogmas of modern science (modernism) relating to Determinism i.e. an outcome can always be predicted and controlled. Reductionism - where everything can be taken apart and understood. Thus imprints relating to energies were placed randomly into the work without rhyme nor reason - they just appeared when the creative spirit said they should and modernism backfires. It is odd to think of these things now as at the time, on the cusp of the seventies and eighties and being totally engrossed in the work, there was little sense of the postmodernist camp. Only in retrospect does one realise the consequences of the work." (Email, 8 Feb 2011, V&A RF 2010/216).

C.8-2010