‘I wanted to tell my story first-hand through these pieces, rather than having other people tell my stories about me or on my behalf,’ says Fitton. Photo: The Star/Azlina Abdullah
What are memories but stories that take shape in our minds and evolve over time? And are they truly accurate depictions of what happened, or do we tend to fill in the gaps with our own imaginings?
In Kuala Lumpur-based fashion designer-visual artist Joshua Fitton’s second solo exhibition, Shadows In Time, now showing at The Back Room gallery until July 28, his personal memories take the form of broken ceramic plates that are made anew with intricately detailed ink drawings filling the spaces in between.
If his debut solo last year, What Dreams May Come, with its collection of a hundred ceramic eggs, explored potential futures, Shadows In Time digs into the past, seen through the hazy lens of different moments in time.
“Each piece is like a tunnel back in time, zooming into an experience or a memory of a story from the past,” says Fitton during a recent interview at the Kuala Lumpur gallery.
“I was intrigued by the concept of storytelling – the telling and retelling of stories, and how when they’re told, and retold, and retold, they change over time, bit by bit,” he adds.
Fitton, 37, then decided to pair his desire to explore this idea with his existing interest in blue-and-white ceramics.
Piecing the exhibition together
“I’ve always had this obsession with blue and white Chinese ceramics, especially the ones that were found in shipwrecks, and the history behind them,” he says, sharing bits of background here and there about various patterns, such as the Peony and the Indian Tree.
For those of you wondering – and we’re sure many of you are – no, the vintage plates he used didn’t come broken. Each one came from his own collection, and Fitton broke them himself.
A visitor at The Back Room takes a closer look at 'Pagoda', from Fitton’s new exhibition 'Shadows In Time' in Kuala Lumpur. Photo: The Star/Azlina Abdullah
Was it difficult for him to break the plates? Surely, it wasn’t as joyous as plate smashing at a Greek wedding.
“I actually get asked this question a lot for this show,” says Fitton, who has British and Malay parentage, with a chuckle.
“No, it wasn’t really hard to break the plates. For me, it’s my way of telling a story. Yes, an old plate could be considered valuable, but what I’m doing here is also valuable.”
That said, the artist reassures us that the plates he broke were not of high value – he found many of them in thrift stores for around RM20.
Memories and new stories
Fitton selected plates, dating from the 1920s to the 1990s, based on how their existing illustrations connected to memories he wanted to highlight.
“The plates already carry their own narratives, their designs a ‘romanticisation’ of faraway places and cultures reimagined through other people’s retelling. There can be a lot of embellishments, the adding of some things, and the omission of other things,” says Fitton.
“But after I break a plate, I’d take the fragments and arrange them in such a way that it tells a whole new story, filling the gaps in between with my own embellishments through the ink drawings.”
Fitton works on one of the pieces for his second solo exhibition, featuring broken ceramics. Photo: Joshua Fitton
Viewed up close, you’ll find that many of the works are a jumble of architectural styles from different periods and nations sitting alongside each other in a single composition – ruins from classical Greek structures are set next to stately English country houses, or the curved eaves of Chinese temples adorn a modern shophouse, or a 19th-century German castle that you might find in fairytales makes an appearance in a tropical jungle scene.
Each of the 13 pieces in the exhibition represents a core memory or significant period in Fitton’s life, weaving together the story of the trained architect’s journey so far, which has ventured into fashion and art.
“Some of them are good memories ... and some of them are painful,” he admits.
Fitton points out the piece called Bath, after the English city where he was born, which even includes a sketch of an old map of the city.
“The story behind this is that it reminds me of my grandmother, who passed away in 2012, soon after I finished my Master’s (in architecture from the University of Lincoln).
“It was the plate itself that made me think of Bath, this Japanese plate called ‘Ye Olde England’ that doesn’t really look like England. It got me thinking about the River Avon and Pulteney Bridge in Bath and triggered the memory of her. Bath has always been a happy and safe place for me, but I haven’t been back since she passed; it’s been more than 10 years,” he recalls poignantly.
For Fitton, while the works in this series offer a delicate balance between the real and the imagined, they are, most importantly, narratives of his own making.
“Stories from the past inform the story at present, so I wanted to look back on these memories and reflect on how they influenced me to be the person who I am today. I wanted to tell my story first-hand through these pieces, rather than having other people tell my stories about me or on my behalf,” he explains.
'Bath' by Fitton, a work that brings back fond memories of his late grandmother who lived in England. The English town was also the artist's place of birth. Photo: The Star/Azlina Abdullah
But in the tradition of all storytellers, Fitton made sure to leave some room that’s open to interpretation – he purposefully left blank white spaces in the middle of each piece.
“For those who own a piece, this space is for you to fill with whatever you want, be it your perception of the story being told by the piece, your own story ... or it can even just remain an empty space,” he says.
‘Make for the sake of making’
Those who follow local fashion brands are likely already familiar with Fitton – he’s the founder of Atelier Fitton, a bespoke menswear label based at the Zhongshan Building, and a Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week regular. Prior to that, he worked for three years as an architect.
“Ceramics has always been a hobby,” says Fitton. He has been breaking and assembling ceramic pieces for 10 years now.
“It’s a calming, safe place for me, and a good way to kill time while being productive at the same time,” he shares.
It was only during the Covid-19 lockdown that Fitton began to take this hobby more seriously.
“The lockdown gave me the time and space to just make for the sake of making, which resulted in my first solo show.”
With the pieces he worked on for Shadows In Time, however, there was the added element of ink drawings, or as Fitton calls it, “glorified doodles”.
“When I was an architect, I quickly got bored and fed up of building cookie-cutter residential houses, office towers, hotels, and other soulless buildings. I turned to fashion because it gave me the creative outlet I needed.
“I only realised that I missed drawing when I worked on these pieces, which feature some architectural elements,” he says.
But whether it’s sketching blueprints or designing clothes or producing ceramic pieces, to Fitton, his goal remains the same: to tell a story.
Shadows In Time is showing at The Back Room, Zhongshan Building in Kuala Lumpur until July 28. Free admission. Open Wednesday to Sunday, noon to 6pm.
