Natalya Korchemkina and Inna Rogova | Islands

We have been working side by side in the same studio for over 25 years. We work alongside each other, but separately, and only in the final exhibition we unite our ceramics. Over the years we have made many exhibitions in Russia and other countries (USA, Spain, UK). We participated in various international ceramic symposiums, festivals, exhibitions and art residencies. We are members of the Union of Artists of Russia and the Union of Bulgarian Artists.
The exhibition «Islands» was formed gradually. Our starting point was the banal idea that every person is an island in the stormy sea of life. A separated individual territory, the only ground underfoot, both a shelter and a prison of isolation. How to reach the other ‘islands’? What map can I use to navigate here? What strange plants from other lands does the sea foam wash up at my feet?
Our installation is a visualisation of this feeling of loneliness and togethereness. Mysterious and exotic, friendly, inviting contact or resisting, self-absorbed, attractive and repellent, disappearing but leaving a reflection … The islands –guardians of souls. We would like the viewer who enters into our installation, to continue the flow of associations and metaphors on which it is founded, and add their own. Because every island is inimitable…