ceramics

Haptic/Tacit exhibition at the Leyden Gallery and The Old Fire Station, Oxford.



The opening paragraph from our introduction written by Bonnie Kemske


In October 2016 Haptic/Tacit opened at the Leyden Gallery for one week. http://leydengallery.com/haptictacit2
It was always our intention to have a short run for London and a longer run outside of London.

 Just as a reminder as my last blog post talking about this was back in April.

 Haptic/Tacit is a collective including five makers who met in 2013 on the Crafts Councils development programme Hothouse.

What we all have in common is an innate fascination with making and material language.
Some of us are bound through process or material others by concept or exploration.
This opportunity has enabled us to develop creative networks and to be able to involve our mentors or buddies from the programme to showcase these working partnerships.

Exhibitors

 Kim Norton http://www.kimnorton.co.uk
Laura Ellen Bacon http://lauraellenbacon.com

Jane Cairnes http://www.janecairns.co.uk
Annie Turner http://www.galeriebesson.co.uk/turner.html

Laura Grain http://www.lauragrain.com
Shelly Goldsmith http://shellygoldsmith.com

Tomas Appleton http://www.thosworks.com
Giles Macdonald http://www.gilesmacdonald.com

Grant Aston http://www.grantaston.com/#0
Bonnie Kemske http://www.bonniekemske.com

Install begins







Group discussion before opening 


Opening night 




We were given some Arts Council funding which enabled us to print an exhibition catalogue. 
We felt this was an important element to support the two exhibitions, as it helps to build a deeper understanding and greater insight into each partnership. The catalogue includes five conversations between each maker and mentor and touches upon elements around working practice that can't possibly be completely visible just by experiencing the work.

The key element that holds the catalogue together is Kimberley Chandler's essay called Material Talk. Looking at how we have come to work together and the importance of the collective voice. 
The conversations and dialogue we have ignited with Kimberley will continue in Oxford where you can hear us in conversation where Kimberley will be chairing the evenings event. 



Shelley Goldsmith


Laura Grain 


Giles MacDonald


Thomas Appleton 


Bonnie Kemske


Grant Aston


Laura Ellen Bacon


Kim Norton


Annie Turner 


Jane Cairns

Haptic/Tacit opens in Oxford on January 13th at the Old Fire Station and can be visited until March. 

During the exhibition we will be running a workshop and a Q&A. 
More information can be found on the website. please note although these events are free to attend tickets will still need to be booked in advance. http://www.oldfirestation.org.uk/exhibit/haptictacit/
The Old Fire Station, Oxford 

Setting off from Vanguard studios to pick Grant up.


We finally arrive after an epic six hour journey from London to Oxford the day of the train strike.


Day 2 of install we Laura and Giles.





The decals installed after much fear they maybe too large.



 Our catalogues ready for the opening Becki kindly made a shelf for them to be neatly displayed throughout the duration of the exhibition.


Giles MacDonald and Thomas Appleton


I changed my collection to scale it down slightly for the space. This was discussed with the gallery at the very beginning. Collection 2 was three renditions of brick ranging from the found object to fired and unfired porcelain creating small assemblages.

 Collection 3 was exhibited on grey slate instead of mirror glass showing a handmade rendition of the brick form in black and white. Made from porcelain and black clays the cracks and stresses reveal the making process and hi-light the evidence of my weight applied to the material.




Laura Ellen Bacon



Laura Grain and Shelley Goldsmith


Grant Aston showed different work in Oxford as his previous work was being exhibited overseas.


 Bonnie Kemske

Jane Cairns 
Jane remade this piece, changing the darker lines than ran through the work shown in London. 

Annie Turner 
Collaborative making workshop 




Jane and Grant ran a collaborative making workshop for adults one Saturday afternoon. 
The idea behind this was to get everyone thinking as a group. 
Architecture was given as a starting point as this lends itself to structural building methods, it immediately triggered ideas of scale.
Additional props such as wood, bamboo canes, string etc were used to help create a foundation and the clay could be introduced in and around that.

The exhibition






The Window

We were given the opportunity of having a dedicated window to introduce the exhibition from the gallery shop entrance. 
In order for this to have an impact we decided that CaCO3 was to be hung in two parts as it filled the entire space and is a piece of work that talks about material, scale and locality.
The chalk for this work was gathered from Sombourne chalk quarry in Hampshire. One of the last chalk quarries in the UK. 







MA Design: Central Saint Martins 2011

It has recently occurred to me that I started this blog 5 years ago shortly after finishing my MA at Central Saint Martins in 2011. We were the last year to graduate in the Lethaby building, Southampton Row in Holborn, and for the first time allocated the large room on the ground floor.

 Here are a few images from our final show MA Design Ceramics, Furniture, Jewellery.
All Images have been taken from the University of the Arts Central Saint Martins degree show blog 2011. 
http://blogs.arts.ac.uk/csm/2011/07/30/ma-design-cfj-2011/




Anne Frobeen 


Sam Sheard


Alexander Mazur-Knyazeva


Elena Nunziata


Niloufar Afnan


Kim Norton

Making ideas with brick.

My first blog post for 2016.

So far I've been working on several different projects some I can begin to drip feed images through. Here are some ideas emerging for a couple of pending exhibitions later in the year.

My continuing fascination with brick is a starting point. Some of these pieces have been found some have been given to me and others have been carved by myself. 

What I'm immediately thinking about is weight. 
Or how these pieces and compositions can join together to make one large piece of work.





Revisiting these porcelain chunks that were initially split into sections. However,  I've never fully explored the fact that they all belong together. Considering that they were cut from one piece of clay there is an immediate connection.

 The cuts and joins, the raw outer edges, the traces of being handled.
These elements have been a consideration of mine for a while now and it may have been something that remained part of that feeding process whilst developing another idea. 

 I often find that pieces of work that have been produced quickly as part of a bigger thought can still hold their own as a stand alone object. There is a huge value in these pieces and to move them into another context can often unlock those initial thoughts that may or may not have fed the final work that they were originally born from. 






As well as being consumed by the idea of weight in clay I have also been throwing other key words around such as suspension, gravity and balance. 

Using existing work to begin this process I ventured outside with a bag of string, hooks, wire, sheeting, fabric and with Ben's help we began to explore how we could convey these singular descriptive words through objects and compositions. The works will not be shown outside but I find it so much easier to have space as opposed to being restricted to a room or studio. It also helps to have the addition of the elements to contend with because this could help change the direction of the thinking or help to stumble across something that would never have previously been a consideration. 

This is a starting point! I still have a long way to go but I always enjoy the time that allows you to really experiment with ideas without feeling they are too precious. Thoughts and ideas come and go quite swiftly at this stage. 






Theaster Gates at White Cube, London.

A short and sweet post about my brief visit the The White Cube Gallery a couple of weeks ago to see the Theaster Gates Exhibition Freedom of Assembly.

I'm not going to talk extensively about this experience as I think the link to the film articulates it far more than I could put in to words.

The images below were taken in one of the three rooms. 
This collection of work was the reason I wanted to visit. A vast open space houses an selection of huge imposing black tar canvases. I think it's obvious to anyone how knows me…. Why these simplistic, powerful material led works stopped me in my tracks with such a sudden bolt.

Enormous in scale, the subtle layers of tar and rubber were hardly visible until you really examined the surface. The light just caught sections hi-lighting these material based panels. They were strong and present within the space but at the same time there was also a quiet quality to them.

Each piece commanded your time to look and examine and simply be for a moment.

As the film explains in more detail the reason Gates used these particular materials and with that understanding and knowledge the works become deeply embedded with a sense of his family history through process a deep understanding of material behaviour and how the two cross over into different contexts.

http://whitecube.com/artists/theaster_gates/

http://whitecube.com/channel/in_the_gallery_current/theaster_gates_bermondsey_2015/





My Inspiration

For a while now I've been trying to make sense of the many many different strands of focus and interests that make up my practice.

Because I don't make collections of work or have a range of objects I'm reconised by or known for I think I can often feel as though I have many separate elements.

However, on closer inspection I really don't think that is necessarily the case.

There are key ideas and points of reference I take for my conceptual thinking and in this post I hope to be able to show some of the inspiration, sources of research and smilarities that run throughout my multi layered working methods. 

If I begin with ceramics as this is always at the core of my thinking despite the fact I may not always use it or indeed fire it. Most of my exploratory work begins around either clay, clay materials in their raw form or clay soils.  


 Puddle clay from Stoke on Trent 

Raw clay before it's processed into bags or made it's way through a pug mill. 
This is one stage I love about this material, It can be seen in clay pits in such large quantites and it hi-lights how enormous, heavy, and dense this is but for me it really inspired ideas of being able to built on a large scale. 


On the other end of the spectrum I adore using porcelain it's a material that really needs to be handled with care and experience. Where I'm at this present moment with porcelain is trying to reliquish control and push it to it's breaking point.  



Brick a clay material I fell in love with during my MA. 
By using multiples allows you to build sizeable pieces of work but I'm also drawn to materials that may be considered mundane or ordinary. Most of us may be confronted with brick on a daily basis but it becomes somewhat invisible or we take it for granted as a standard building block for houses and buildings. 

Once you step away and begin to look more carefully at the range of bricks the different colours and textures used and how they have been positioned together it becomes more evident that the common brick offers so much more. 
  

The Red House 


Cambridge 

Continuing with the possible idea of the mundane the next subject has recently become prominent after my exhibition last year at Siobhan Davies dance where I was looking at local London clay and soils specific to Southwark. This has opened up a new fascination with soils and geology across the UK. 

 Wherever, I visit I take a roll of small plastic bags and a small trowel with me to remove a sample and come home to test it out on to canvas.



Layers for the Human Nature Season at Siobhan Davies 2014

The act of making is obviously an huge part of what I do and this can often be overlooked when confronted with a final piece of work. Process and working methods are equally important, sometimes I find it can be more important and revealing that's one reason I always like to give an insight into each project from start to finish. 


Mark-making 

Whether this is on paper, Canvas or clay. Texture and surface normally plays a part in what  I explore and it maybe linked back to my fascination with the handling of materials and tactility. 






Moving on to art movements other artists designers and architects I've already mentioned Richard Serra, Anselm Kiefer and Peter Zumthor in previous posts. 
I haven't talked about Minimalism or Land Art in any great depth. Two movements that have had an influence on my work to date and continues to.
I've recently been reading a book called Minimalism: Origins by Edward Strikland.  

One difficult question I was asked was: What is your aesthetic? 
I find that fairly tricky to answer however, I will attempt to and the two words that immediately come to mind are Minimal and Raw. 

I try not to overly complicate work but when you are working with materials that have normally come straight from the ground I like to keep them as pure as possible you are ultimately dealing with an unrefined quality. 

 Here are two examples of work I'm particularly fond of in the Forest of Dean and think they both encapsulate my description.
Raw By Neville Gabie, located 2001


By David Nash, charred larch 
http://www.forestofdean-sculpture.org.uk/index.php/sculptures/60


Forest of Dean Sculpture Trail





Architectural spaces, Phenomenology 

 Something I always strive for in my work is to involve the audience or to allow the viewer to be able to react with the work on a sensory level. I'm not interested in making precious work that can't be touched, walked through, sat on. This is a common notion born from the context of the gallery and I'm certainly not a fan of the plinth. 
The plinth for me conjures up the notion of unapproachable work that can simply be viewed or enjoyed from afar. 

Phenomenology is a subject I attempted to begin to understand about four or five years ago. It's often talked about in the context of architecture and architectural practice.
It's a huge area to try and condense down into a few sentences. 
Essentially it has been born from philosophy and psychology based around the work of Edmund Husserl, and later developed by Heidegger.

 Phenomenology is the human perception of a place space or experience. it's not tangible and this makes it a complex area to try and define.
Despite that being the case it's something I try and capture within parts of my research and development of an idea or project. 

 Whether this is through tactility, sound, light, dark, small confined spaces, or the positioning of the work itself. Every small detail and subtle nuance is considered. 


Winchester Cathedral Crypt.

Finally gardens are another important part of my practice. Fascinated with space, colour, planting, I grow plants myself this has to help with my understanding and appreciation. Gardens are more than simply places to step outside into. 
Gardens are to be truly experienced and there is a sense of freedom that can be gained from a garden. During my MA I spent a lot of my research visiting different kinds of garden spaces. From the highly formal layout of Sissinghurst to the French show in Chaumont exhibiting more experimental spaces.

 They are spaces that are in a constant state of transformation not only with the plants life cycle but also with the weather conditions and changing of the seasons means that gardens are never static. You experience these fleeting moments and then it moves into the next phase and this continues all year round. 


Japanese Garden Vancouver 


Ightham Mote


The High Line New York


Physical traces of making: Part 3

Since my last additions based around 'Physical traces of making' I've been scaling the work up slightly and also looking at different ways to present it. 

Work in progress with porcelain 



The two or three pieces below have been photographed on mirror glass against white and black backgrounds to see how or whether it changes the appearance in any way. On closer inspection the porcelain against black seems to bring out more detail on the surface. 

 The use of monotones in reversal is definitely something to explore further.

 Mirror glass is a material I'm revisiting from the exhibition at Arthouse1 in 2014.
I'm fascinated by extending the work and revealing parts of the form that would normally be concealed by the plinth or surface it's sitting on. 



I'm particularly interested in these tiny points of contact with the mirror glass raising the rest of the surface up and away. Creating new visual spaces intangible spaces and small pockets of space. 


High fired Porcelain

Exhibition at Arthouse1 October 2014


It's often said that simplicity requires a lot of hard work. In the case of our installation at Arthouse1 in Bermondsey Sasha and myself were setting up for about a week. 
A little longer than we both had expected but this particular exhibition required an exceptional attention to detail. We had decided to keep the ceramic works low to the ground in order for the audience to look at the work from a different perspective. 
I personally feel that a lot of galleries show work at eye level on plinths and it's too easy. It's a format we are all far too familiar with and it's not always the best way of really be able to focus on the work. 

Perpendicular opened on Thursday evening (9th October) after much help and assistance throughout from both Rebecca Fairman and Adrain Hicks. 

Here are a few images of the exhibition in natural daylight on the first day kindly taken by Adrian Hicks. 

www.arthouse1.co.uk




 Image taken by Adrian Hicks 2014


 Image taken by Adrian Hicks 2014


 Image taken by Adrian Hicks 2014

 Image taken by Adrian Hicks 2014


 Image taken by Adrian Hicks 2014

 Image taken by Adrian Hicks 2014


 Image taken by Adrian Hicks 2014



Image taken by Adrian Hicks 2014
Sasha is exhibiting two installations and a series of photographs that have been born from the installations themselves. Through the use of water, light and motion. 





These collaborative pieces titled Collection of five #1 and #2 comprise of small ceramic segments that sit along side Sasha'a photography. 
There is a strong synthesis between us both particularly through the use of mark making. 


Image Taken by Ben Winkley 2014 


Image taken by Ben Winkley 2014 

My two collections on show are titled Kuro and Shiro are looking at small intimate spaces that contain light. 
These objects are the complete opposite to Sasha'a works. They are dense, heavy and present within the space. 

There is a physical tactility to them and the process of making is evident within the traces and marks left either by my hand the tools or other processes I have undergone to achieve certain aesthetic qualities. 

Sasha's work is more transient it's continuously changing with movement, light and shadow. There is an illusion of something tangible but mark making has been created through an impermanant medium and there is an ethereal quality to the entire body of work showing here.

Perpendicular will be showing at Arthouse1 until 1st November 2014 
The gallery is open every Thursday-Sunday from 3pm - 7.30pm or by appointment 

Perpendicular's ceramic pieces and photography for Arthouse1

As one exhibition sadly ends at Siobhan Davies another opens in a couple of weeks time at Arthouse1 in Bermondsey, London.

 In my last post I talked about adding more images of work that will be shown in the exhibition and since then the kiln has been on pretty much continuously. I still have four or five more firings to squeeze in before completion but it's definitely coming together. 

 I will be showing a series of black and white pieces along side Sasha's installations and photography. 

 Sasha is working and developing a series of site specific works so I can't really show the installations at this stage until we begin to install next week. 

 But here's a peek at some of the photographs and my ceramic objects.










Perpendicular at Arthouse1

In just over 6 weeks time Perpendicular my collaborative work with Sasha will be exhibited at Arthouse1 in Bermondsey London. 

 This beautiful airy white space belongs to Rebecca Fairman and is dedicated to showing works of emerging and established artists. 
www.arthouse1.co.uk 

Last week we both visited to make final decisions for the curation. Each piece of work has been made or specifically designed for the space so every small detail has to be considered in advance. 







We have been exploring light, shadow, and small spaces through the medium of ceramics, photography and installation. 

 The exhibition opens on Friday 10th October 2014 - 1st November 2014 
The Private is Thursday 9th October 6.30 - 8.30pm 

 I will be posting more images of work in progress over the next few weeks leading up to the opening. 

In Conversation with Laura Ellen Bacon

Tomorrow evening I'm in conversation with the lovely Laura Ellen Bacon at Siobhan Davies Dance as part of their Human Nature season. Laura is  known for her intricately woven large scale spaces using willow.

 The evening begins at 7pm and we will be discussing the crossovers between Space, Scale and Site. 

Siobhan Davies Dance


Photo by Alison Proctor
Photo by Alison Proctor

Lines, Levels, Layers

Kim Norton in conversation with Laura Ellen Bacon

You are invited to a special conversation exploring the new exhibition by ceramicist Kim Norton onFriday 25 July, 7pm.
Siobhan Davies Studios
85 St. George's Road
London SE1 6ER
In Lines, Levels, Layers ceramicist Kim Norton dissects our perceptions of daily life and interactions with nature. Kim looks at clay as a material before it becomes an object, as a life-giving property to plants and something which is integral to all living matter. The exhibition invites the viewer to look more closely at the materials around us, under our feet and within our visual landscapes, encompassing the different smells, colours and textures of clay and soil gathered from locations around Southwark.
Sculptor Laura Ellen Bacon creates site-specific willow sculptures in urban and landscape settings such as Chatsworth House, Somerset House and New Art Centre at Roche Court. Laura weaves together willow to make spaces that can be intimate like nests or that reflect movement and structural growth at a human scale.
Kim and Laura will speak about crossovers in their work and the similar and differing processes on working site-specifically.
This event is FREE but please RSVP to info@siobhandavies.com or call Reception on 020 7091 9650.
Exhibition Dates: Friday 18 July – Sunday 21 September
Kim Norton Exhibition Tour: Tuesday 16 September, 2-3pm
We very much look forward to seeing you there.