Vessel

Joe Tilson
2000

Joe Wilson was born in London in 1928 and mostly lived there with frequent sojourns in Cortona and Venice. In 1950 his inaugural works were shown in an ongoing series of exhibitions intitled Young Contemporaries. In 1955 he spent time in Rome and studying with Marino Marini at the Brera Academy in Milan. The 1960s saw him join the British Pop Art movement and thereafter his work was shown all over the world.

Almost always working with pre-existing images sourced from mass media, Wilson transforms modern iconography into evocative forms (often on painted wood) attached in relief to his artworks. What apparently seem to be random accumulations of objects in incongruous juxtaposition jar with the surrounding geometrical forms, defying any possible explanation. He pays careful attention to the material value of the items used, creating visual puns where classical elements are revisited in a modern key.

In 2000 Wilson donated his own interpretation of a Vasella (Vessel) to the MACC. At first glimpse the piece’s colour and form evoke classical terracotta but on closer inspection there is a playfully opaque opposition with archaic script and geometrical forms. The vessel’s stopper evokes a vegetable form, just like the first mass-produced wine receptacles.