Cars

Gas and wood-fired ceramic multiples

Working across printmaking, painting and ceramics, Charlie Duck explores drawing in the expanded field. Cars, bikes, worms, sleeping people, water, plants, snails, hats and limbs are recurring imagery throughout his work. Duck’s interest in cars is multifaceted: as objects of speed, as shapes that the off-cuts from larger ceramic works would morph into, or as spaces in which complex or unexpected conversations become easier. He’s especially interested in how cars are a device used in films to progress narratives. Cars takes inspiration from a scene in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1967 film Week End. At times relatable, surreal and dark, this satirical single-shot traffic jam scene lasts a total of seven minutes and fifty seconds, as the camera journeys along the road with the protagonist. Like in the film, Duck’s cars are sat nose to tail, the bottom of their tyres inferring some kind of invisible road surface. Each car is unique, made from individual handmade glazes, and as cars are bought, they are removed from the installation, and the traffic clears.