Press Release!!!!

2007-05-27T14:49:00.000-07:00

http://www.nationalglasscentre.com/pressreleases/north%20%20south.pdf

NEWS FROM: National Glass Centre
Contact: Kenneth Murphy
0191 515 5555
ken@nationalglasscentre.com
Liberty Way • Sunderland • SR6 0GL • www.nationalglasscentre.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

“Gateshead Plates” by Mimi Joung
Side Café, Newcastle upon Tyne
1 – 30 June 2007

Come and experience for yourself the joy of sharing a meal served on beautiful, English Blue Willow,
Stafforshire Burleigh Blue Calico, Royal Doulton’s Centennial Rose and Wedgewood Queen’s Ware. For the
last 4 months artist Mimi Joung has been collecting English china plates from charity shops across North East
England. Her quest has been commissioned by the National Glass Centre for the exhibition North & South.
Joung will replace the utility white tableware at Newcastle’s Side Café with decorative second-hand English
china, challenging us to experience the pleasure of eating off beautiful ceramics and consider why they’ve all but
disappeared from our tables. Customers are asked to comment in the dedicated webblog,
www.gatesheadplates.blogspot.com

Following her exhibition at the Side Café Joung will reconfigure the plates to construct a carpet of memories
that acknowledges lost and past lives that will open at the National Glass Centre in July. She will lay a table that
imagines how we ‘take tea’ in the Twenty-first Century - there are still a number of cultural conventions, rituals
and formalities to ‘visiting’ and being a visitor. Normally visitors to English homes are still offered a cup of tea
or (these days) a coffee; and you may well be offered a bite to eat.

Joung’s new works will explore the changes in English culture and identity through the shifting status of
tableware. Intrigued by why household tableware that is still aesthetically pleasing and perfectly functional is
discarded (in favour of cheap ceramics), her projects are an opportunity to rethink the history of the object.

Notes:
Side Café, Opening times: Mon & Sun, 8am – 5pm, Tues – Sat, 8am – 11pm

The Artist
Joung was born and brought up in Korea. She moved to England seven years ago to study conservation
painting, but transferred to the Royal College of Art five years ago to continue studying ceramics, having
previously trained as a potter in Korea and Canada. Since graduating from RCA, Joung has been awarded a
prestigious Banff Fellowship, a Roostein Hopkins award and is currently taking part in the Crafts Council’s next
Move scheme in partnership with the National Glass Centre and Sunderland University. Joung’s current works
are installation or situation/relational projects, using clay, glass, second-hand, found materials and everyday
objects.

North + South:
National Glass Centre
1 July – 23 September 2007

Preview: Tuesday 10 July 2007

An unprecedented, collaborative exhibition taking place simultaneously over six venues: National Glass Centre,
Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art and Reg Vardy Gallery in Sunderland and John Hansard Gallery, Millais
Gallery and Southampton City Art Gallery in Southampton. Fifteen artists have been commissioned to produce
new work responding to the notion of English identity in the 21st century.

The National Glass Centre exhibits three of these commissions; installations by Samar Asamoah involving glass
and Mimi Joung involving ceramics and a mail art project, ‘Track and Place’, alongside existing prints by Nicky
Coutts and a sound piece by Susan Diab.

– END –

Welcome to side cafe project!

2007-04-28T09:42:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Gateshead plates web blog!

Side Cafe Project

Press Release!!!!

Welcome to side cafe project!