Amy Douglas

Amy Douglas is an art restorer by trade. Working in the niche specialization of Staffordshire ceramic restoration, the artist has come to create her own contemporary version of these figurines under the guise of, The Art of Salmagundi.

Using only broken or destroyed Staffordshire figures from the 19th century, Douglas delicately brings the found pieces back to life. Here the artist breaks with tradition by reconfiguring the ceramics in seamless, sardonic ways. Douglas’ contemporary play on an ultra-English tradition makes the figures disturbingly seductive. The changes are often subtle, and offer darkly humorous statements with a socio-political bent.

'Salmagundi' is an Anglo-French word meaning ‘a variety of ingredients'. This refers to the haphazard way in which the pieces are found, reconfigured, and subsequently transformed. Implications of awkward social situations, emotional difficulties, and snippets of conversations overheard, serve as inspirations for the titles, which are integral to the pieces themselves.

The original Victorian pottery was based on prints and pamphlets advertising local attractions. Mainly sold at fairgrounds as toys or souvenirs, this was art that was accessible to all. Over the past year, Douglas has collected broken and damaged figurines and subsequently restored them with a surrealist twist. Body parts may be missing or replaced with new attachments of disproportionate size, or an unexpected object. The domestic scenes are manipulated or subverted with a subtle irony. If the originals were portrayals of Victorian romanticism, the artist’s reworked or distorted sculptures are representations of twenty-first century angst.

These are the unfortunate souvenirs of our times.