Re-collecting identity through obsolescence and reusability

Abstract

The central concerns on which ceramicist Tony Briffa has founded his most recent work have addressed obsolescence of form and image as opportunity for reusability into new discourse objects, as a reflection on and search for an alternative identity. His core practice has regularly involved a process which disengages the object from its habitual context, and through the reappropriation and reuse of that which is considered outmoded, which has fallen on the wayside, or is frozen in significance through cultural or aesthetic reformation or progress, he rethinks meaning. Obsolescence and reusability therefore become a ploy in order to readdress the purpose and making of a new medium, form or object that although confronting histories and memories, through incongruous alliance give rise to a fascinating cross-breed, which is thrown once more into the dense net of our socio-cultural collective, imbued with a new significance and demanding new intellectual implications.