exhibitions

Fragile! In Transit / Traveling exhibition around Europe
2012-2013

Next stop: Milkwood Gallery, Cardiff, Wales
41 Lochaber Street, Roath, Cardiff CF24 3LS

Dates: March 14-25, 2013
Opening Reception: March 22, from 6 pm.

Fragile! In Transit is the initial project of the Project Network 3 (three) collective, a group of 9 ceramic artists from across Europe. Throughout the course of one year, the artists are sending 9 pieces of work on a journey by post to each of their countries of residence. Fragile! In Transit engages with and responds directly to the notion of place, identity and culture. All the work is designed to fit into a prescribed box of similar format and together forms an exhibition centering on the balance between reality, fiction and perception of place. The project has already travelled to Ireland, Denmark and England. Upcoming destinations include Finland and Italy.

Artists: Elodie Alexandre - France/India, Roberta Giussani - Italy, Joseph Hopkinson - Wales, Katja Kotikoski - Finland, Claire Muckian - Northern Ireland, Eglė Pakšytė - Lithuania, Jill Shaddock - England, Helene Søs Schjødts - Denmark, Katie Spragg - England.

The group met at a six week symposium for recent ceramic graduates at Guldagergaard International Ceramic Centre in Denmark last year.

Follow the exhibition on its journey at www.facebook.com/FragileInTransit

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Louise Hindsgavl and Gitte Jungersen: Setting the Stage / Copenhagen Ceramics, Denmark
30 August - 22 September 2012

Opening reception: Thursday, 30 August, 5 – 8 pm.
Artist talk with Louise Hindsgavl and Gitte Jungersen: Saturday, 1 September, 2 pm.

For their upcoming exhibition at Copenhagen Ceramics – Setting the Stage – Louise Hindsgavl and Gitte Jungersen are each showing their variant of a contemporary version of the figurative ceramic tradition. They both share an interest in visually expressing the psychological aspects of life and their wish to reflect the inner life of humans in figurative works with elements of animal and human being.

From children’s books and fairy tales we are used to projecting human characteristics on to animals and so we likewise identify with the drama that takes place in the ceramic scenes of Jungersen and Hindsgavl.

The ceramic expression of Louise Hindsgavl and Gitte Jungersen differ widely. But each have, in their own way, revived the figurative tradition and renewed its relevance. The porcelain figure is a starting point for both, but the kitschy and banal references, that are normally attached to this genre, are replaced and transformed into underlying, more disquieting messages. The figure or the figurine – which plays an ever important rôle in the history of ceramics – often contains wit and humour and is of lesser scale than that of sculpture, is well suited for both artists’ commenting accounts on big and small dramas of life.

For the exhibition at Copenhagen Ceramics Gitte Jungersen has taken a new step. She has in recent years been transforming the stories of found, industrially produced, porcelain animals by inserting them through firing into new landscape-like ’scenes’. This feature of the earlier works is now to a large degree substituted by abstract structures made up of squared shapes. However, these otherwise stable forms are falling in, collapsing and broken at times. The dissolution is further emphasized by masses of glaze, that overflow the shapes as big blobs, partially erasing them. The scenes evoke a sensation of the uncontrollable and catastrophic, while the ceramic appear sensually specious and beautiful.

Glazes play a very special rôle in the works of Gitte Jungersen. She is known for her heavily sensual surfaces of great textural complexity. The bubbly surfaces of her pieces result from the glazes ’boiling’ at top temperature of the ceramic kiln and the subsequent rapid solidifying in the cooling-process. Thus the handling itself of the materials contributes to emphasizing the thematic content. Whether it’s a nearing dissolution awaiting or rather a new narrative in the making, is left open for you to decide.

Louise Hindsgavl’s contribution to the exhibition circles around the loss of innocence, the confusion and the transformation, that happens in the transition from childhood to becoming an adult. For this show, Hindsgavl has chosen to work with a totally different expression than her well-known porcelain-figures and their absurdist accounts about the darker recesses of the human mind. In recent years she has also experimented with including other materials and ready-mades in her porcelain tableaus. Now the pieces are bigger, of a coarser nature and with quite a different volume than she has mainly been using, but her works still invite to our ongoing discussion about pure and impure.

The work ’Luckys & Bunnys’ refers to the tale of Alice in Wonderland, where the child meets change in the shape of an unknown magical world and where the rabbit is the central element, pulling the child through its development.

Both artists have over many years been frequent exhibitors in Denmark and internationally.

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Jean and Jacqueline Lerat Tribute / Galerie Capazza, Nançay, Paris
September 29 - December 2, 2012

Openning reception: Saturday, September 29th, 5-8 pm.

To welcome today the artworks of Jean and Jacqueline Lerat is an honor, a recognition. We are proud and moved to have published this book, and we will do our best to present «their treasures», which let us hope to deserve the confidence granted by François and Claire Lerat, their children.
Gérard Capazza

Is it pretentious to consider the artwork as an haiku, a so marginal poem.
This is no about ceramics but creation.
I am not interested in the enamels skills. Skills, technique, are situated before creation. The structure maybe? As for the skeleton, you have to add something. Questions have been asked in a dense way.
Somehow, life has imposed.
Then, you could go from the “object situation” to the “creation situation”.
Jacqueline Lerat, May 5th, 1993

It is fundamental that beauty and meaning depend on the person who look at the piece as much as the quality of the work. The artist has the right to be misunderstood, privilege that «the official artist» refuses by his will to set up in advance the way people will per- ceive his work.
Modestly assuming their function, but always overflowing when they are admired, the ceramics of Jean and Jacqueline Lerat oppose the demanding nature of relationship to the whims of actuality…
Bernard Noël, extract of the book Jean et Jacqueline Lerat, éditions Galerie Capazza

Jean (1913-1992) and Jacqueline (1920-2009) LERAT Biography
Jean Lerat’s family is an old family from Berry (French province), where you can find farmers, cabinet makers, horse breeders, Antique dealers. Jean starts at the Fine Arts school in Bourges to learn wood sculpture. Then, he concentrates on sculpture, drawing and landscapes painting. The encounter with François Guillaume will change his life. Dealer, designer and crockery editor in Bourges since the 30’s, he has a lot of contacts with the ceramics and glass factories which realize his models for the French restaurants. He asks Jean Lerat to work in La Borne in 1941, to “renew the pottery tradition fo the village”. He rents a workshop and asks Armand Bedu to supply Jean with the needed materials and to fire the pieces that will be sold in the shop.

In December 1942, Jean Favière, who works at the Berry Museum, and Henri Malvaux, new director of the Fine Arts school in Bourges, start showing interest to the craft productions of la Borne. The village is already renowned by Parisian institutions (Museum of the Decorative Arts, Ceramics Museum of Sèvres) for its authenticity.

Henri Malvaux asks Jacqueline Bouvet to come to La Borne in July 1943. She is allowed to stay until May 1944 thanks to an agreement with François Guillaume. Jean and Jacqueline get married on February 3rd of 1945. They will work in the same place, but they will follow a personal path. But they share clay, enamels and firing.

In 1955 they moved to Bourges, building a new wood-firing kiln and beginning to create more sculptural and abstracted works. While an attentive observation should lead the collector to distinguish their style, they adopt a mutual signature JLERAT from 1945 to 1948, then JLERAT from 1948 to Jean’s death. After 1992, Jacqueline starts again to sign JLERAT.

Their collaboration in ceramics is considered to be among the most important in post- war France. Their teaching at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts in Bourges has influen- ced new generations of potters.

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Gustaf Nordenskiöld exhibition / Galerie NeC, Hong Kong
August 24 - September 29, 2012

Opening: Thursday, August 23, from 6 pm.

Gustaf Nordenskiölds ceramic work deals with issues about functionality, primitivism, natural forces, and perceptible method. He is exploring the field between design, crafts, arts and industrial production.

The exhibition consists of new museum collections, post production, the assembly of pre-existing and newly manufactured items, and works transformed to form new en-sembles. The exhibition presents ambivalent ceramic works, virgin archaeological objects of unknown origin that expresses beauty in the making, or in disrepair.

“My intention is to create works in which the methods are a prerequisite for the final result, where traces of the process remains in the finished work.
To freeze a moment for posterity. To preserve and display an action. What is worth preserving? Methods where the finished objects conveys trace of effort, different movement patterns or natural deformation/formation.”
Traces, as a memory of its creation, Gustaf Nordenskiöld, 2012.

In partnership with the Consulate General of Sweden, Hong Kong.

Gallery Hours: Monday to Saturday, 11 am - 8 pm. Sunday, 1 - 6 pm.

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Reflecting on Erik Gronborg / Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR, USA
August 07, 2012 – February 16, 2013

Selections and Installation by Jeffry Mitchell
Curated by Jeffry Mitchell and Namita Gupta Wiggers

Erik Gronborg employs archetypes of functional ceramic traditions as conceptual vehicles to explore contemporary culture. Combining a 1,000-year-old-continuum of ceramic history with silk-screening, comics, china paint, and commercial glazes, Gronborg’s provocative “crafty” and non-precious approach is a precursor to the “sloppy craft” that is as challenging today as it was in the late 1960s. Working with Seattle-based artist Jeffry Mitchell, selections of Gronborg’s work will be drawn from local public and private collections. Through dialogue and conversation throughout the process with Namita Gupta Wiggers, and an installation designed by Mitchell, the exhibition will explore Gronborg’s use of craft as a tool for social commentary and political satire, and how the work relates to Mitchell’s own explorations of ceramics as a contemporary medium.

Location: Collection Gallery

Opening August 7, 2012 and running through February 16, 2013, this exhibition is part of a series of ongoing explorations in which the Museum invites fresh perspectives on the collection and archive by partnering with artists, creative people, and designers to create public exhibitions. Director and Chief Curator Namita Gupta Wiggers invited ceramic artist Jeffry Mitchell to make selections of Gronborg’s work as a way of fostering a dialogue between the work of these two artists of different generations and as a way of creating conversation around Gronborg’s work.

The Museum is recording conversations between Wiggers and Mitchell about Mitchell’s selections and groupings of the senior artist’s work. These conversations center on the use of craft as a tool for social commentary and political satire, and how Gronborg’s work relates to Mitchell’s own explorations of ceramics as a contemporary sculptural medium. Reflecting on Erik Gronborg, co-curated by Mitchell and Wiggers, features work from the Museum’s collection and from private collections in Portland. The more than 85 works by Gronborg include ceramic, wood, and miniature bronze sculptures.

Erik Gronborg, who moved to the United States from Denmark in 1959, almost immediately began making what he considers functional ceramic works that explore contemporary culture. Combining the 1,000-year-old-continuum of ceramic history with silk-screening, comics, china paint, and commercial glazes, Gronborg’s provocative “crafty” and non-precious approach is a precursor to the “sloppy craft” that is as challenging today as it was in the late 1960s. Gronborg, whose last kiln firing was in 1996, won The City of Paris Award at The Paris Bienale in 1963. Gronborg has spent most of his life as an artist and educator at various institutions in California and also taught at Reed College from 1965-69.

A retrospective of Mitchell’s work, Like a Valentine: The Art of Jeffry Mitchell, opens at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle in October 2012. Mitchell was awarded a Joan Mitchell Grant in 2009 and was a finalist for the Contemporary Northwest Art Awards at the Portland Art Museum in 2008. His work was included in the ICA’s 2009 exhibition, Dirt on Delight: Impulses that Form Clay. Mitchell is represented by Ambach & Rice in Los Angeles.

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The Third Annual Ceramics of America 2012: Exhibition and Art Fair at Fort Mason, San Francisco, California, USA
14-16 September, 2012

Opening Reception and Preview Party: September 13, 2012, 5:30 – 9 pm

Witness A Unique Experience: Ceramic Sculpture from Around the World

The Ceramics Annual of America (CAA) is an ambitious exhibition and art fair spotlighting the quality and diversity of contemporary ceramics from around the world including works from China, Korea, Mexico, Australia and Italy. It is the only event of its kind in the United States and the goal is to encourage the education and enrichment of the public, cultivate a fertile art market, and foster dialog between collectors and makers of ceramic sculpture.

Part of California’s continuing legacy of excellence and innovation in ceramics, the CAA is the largest exhibition and art fair that is entirely focused on ceramic art in America and is modeled after the Ceramic Biennials held in Europe, Korea, Japan and China. It provides a venue for the top regional and international artists from working in the clay medium to show their work to a broader audience of collectors.

The CAA is organized by the California Ceramics Cooperative, a group of invested regional ceramic artists, and will feature panel discussions, lectures, tours as well as daily interactive art demonstrations from 4-5 that will provide a greater understanding of the artistic process for students and educators alike. Schools located in the Bay Area will have free admission all day Friday and should contact the Ceramics Annual for Reservations. Featured artist and instructor Kevin Nierman, author of “The Kids ‘N’ Clay Ceramics Book,” will provide “Artistic childcare” on Saturday and Sunday from 11-3.

The exhibition will be held in the 50,000 square ft. Festival Hall at Ft. Mason, capable of accommodating as many as 10,000 people. A popular attraction for countless national and international visitors to the city, Ft. Mason still resonates with the presence of the California Funk movement of the sixties and seventies that inspired ceramic greats living in San Francisco today. Its close proximity to nature, unique architecture and nostalgic atmosphere contribute a breathtaking backdrop for an impressive array of Ceramic Sculptures.

Last years event was a huge success with over 7,000 people in attendance. The museum quality exhibition included educational lectures by curators such as Peter Selz and Phil Linhares and renowned artists such as Jim Melchert. “The size and scale of such an exhibition and the education opportunities, all under one roof, were extraordinary.” — Art Historian, Peter Selz.

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Made By Hand project & Darien Johnson exhibition / The Clay Studio, Philadelphia, USA
17 August - September 30, 2012

Over the next few months, The Clay Studio will produce a multi part project, titled MADE BY HAND, exploring the relevance of handmade tableware in the 21st century. Two exhibitions are produced in support of this:

Derek Au
Derek Au, is American born of Chinese descent. Educated in the USA he currently lives in Jingdezhen China known for its rich history in ceramic art. Au’s work is a mixture of Eastern and Western cultures, true for the entire field of American Ceramics, and a mix of historic ceramic tradition and contemporary design. His work is inspired by origami, Song Dynasty Qingbai ware and tinware using the forms and methods of its production so prevalent in Jingdezhen. His materials of choice, a porcelain clay body covered by a celadon glaze, are rooted in centuries old tradition, the perfect foil for his minimal and contemporary forms.

Post At Rest
Pots at Rest engages eight ceramists as curators and exhibiting artists: Kari Radasch, Elizabeth Robinson, Lorna Meaden, Ingrid Bathe, Brian Jones, Munemitsu Taguchi, Matthew Hyleck, and Joseph Pintz. All are nationally recognized mid-career makers of tableware selected for the strength of his/her work: the conceptual content, formal qualities and his/her personal aesthetic. As a group they represent a broad range of material use, varied form and the primary processes of making and surfacing. All bring with them an extensive knowledge of the field, professional contacts, and buyers for their work. Each Artist/Curator was assigned a piece of equipment or furniture, typical to most kitchens, where pots when not in use, live or rest. Each selected functional wares for these spaces made by ceramicists from across North America whose work they admire and respect and share their reasons why they believe handmade tableware remains relevant in the 21st century.

An exhibition featuring works by Darien Johnson will be on view at the Banovitz Space:

“How does absorbing information through digital media define a person’s notion of reality? Current technologies facilitate the instantaneous acquisition, manipulation, and subsequent redistribution of perceptual experiences. This recording and transfer of ideas enables people to have a shallow understanding of something without having truly experienced it. How does this affect our interpretation of “real?”

Stemming from an awareness of continually altered states of perceptual consciousness, my work represents the entanglement of human cognition and digital processing. By acquiring and manipulating visual information, I act as the human element while directly engaging in this process I question. The digital compositions are then china painted onto the porcelain forms, which I create as manifestations of the seemingly fluid movement of human cognition.” Darien Johnson

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CHANGE Exhibition / Ceramic Centre Furnace Pagliero, Castellamonte, Italy
28 July - 7 October, 2012

Change, an innovative title that wants to send a strong message about the communicative potential of ceramics in contemporary art world. The objective is clear: it is Castellamonte, the city of stoves, together with the furnace Pagliero, the oldest factory in the suburb wisely restored by owner Daniel Chechi, now a center avant-garde cultural production and to send a new message on the potential and the language of contemporary ceramics. A spirit of continuity with the past, but also breaking, where twelve artists invited to exhibit created specific works of great communicative power, which are fully included in the Olympus of contemporary art.

Artists: Silvia Calcagno, Terry Davies, Mariano Fuga, Gian Genta, Rita Miranda, Simone Negri, Brenno Fish, Jasmine Pignatelli, Franco Rampi, Paola Staccioli
Curator: Silvia Campese

The artists, selected as the most important names in art pottery, have identified a specific site within the architectural splendor of the furnace, creating the appropriate specific interventions designed for the site.

A separate section is devoted to the potter Savona Sandro Lorenzini, the author appreciated not only in Europe, which has made almost all the works shown in the Furnace Pagliero, invited by Daniele Chechi as an “artist in residence”.

The show joins “The metaphysical dream” by Giorgio de Chirico and Lisa Sotilis and “Figures of fire” by Bernard Aubertin, Elio Torrieri, Lilian Rita Callegari, and Umberto Mastroianni. A complex work, supported by the critical point of view by the Director of the International Museum of Applied Arts Today MIAAO, Enzo Biffi Gentili.

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Summer Exhibition 2012 / Erskine Hall & Coe Gallery, London, UK
25 July - 30 August, 2012

Artists: Sebastian Blackie, Claudi Casanovas, Peter Collingwood, Tanya Gomez, Matthew Harris, Deirdre Hawthorne, Steven Heinemann, Shozo Michikawa, Gustavo Pérez, Tim Rowan, Anna Vannotti

Erskine, Hall & Coe specialise in 20th Century and Contemporary ceramics. The gallery is in central Mayfair, off Bond Street, at 15 Royal Arcade.

The gallery carries an extensive stock of ceramics, often including works by, Lucie Rie and Hans Coper, Jennifer Lee, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Shozo Michikawa and Sara Flynn. Its ten annual exhibitions feature the work of British and international artists, in some cases exploring the interplay between ceramics, sculptures and paintings.

Gallery Hours: Monday - Friday: 10 am - 6 pm, Saturday: 10 am - 6 pm (during exhibitions only).

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Wouter Dam exhibition / Galerie NeC, Hong Kong
28 June - 18 August, 2012

“The ceramic sculptures I make, do steadily develop along a clear line, this last group of sculptures here on show are slightly larger and with more unbroken circles incorporated into the sculpture, in this way slowly revealing more of its origins, the vase and bowl shape.

The sculptures are closed and curled on to itself and in this way, keeping more of it’s secret, enticing you to explore the almost hidden inside of the sculpture.
They are covered with a coloured engobe, the latest colours I have introduced are the soft pink, a light porcelain blue, and a grey tone. All these colours are specifically chosen to enhance the shape and to give a good contrast in between light and shade.

The sculptures are built up of elements made on the potterswheel, assembled when leatherhard, every one of them becoming a unique sculpture, although clearly belonging to the same family of shapes.

The sculptures are like drawing lines in space, making the clay seem weightless. The edges are refined and cut through the air in contrast to the soft voluminous exterior surfaces that bask in the light.” Wouter Dam, 2012

Gallery Hours: Monday to Saturday, 11 am - 8 pm. Sunday 1 pm - 6 pm.

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Pisgah Forest and Nonconnah: The Potteries of Walter B. Stephen / University of South Carolina McKissick Museum, Columbia, SC, USA
May 26 – July 27, 2012

Some of the most imaginative and beautiful ceramics of the 20th century will be on display in an exhibition of Walter B. Stephen’s pottery May 26 – July 27 at the University of South Carolina’s McKissick Museum.

Titled “Pisgah Forest and Nonconnah: The Potteries of Walter B. Stephen,” the exhibition will feature 76 rare examples of Stephen’s works, from the first pots that he fired near Nonconnah Creek in Tennessee to crystalline vessels produced at Pisgah Forest near Asheville.

Stephen, born in 1876 in Clinton, Iowa, was heavily influenced by his mother, but he  soon began exploring and developing his own creative talents. In 1904, he established the Nonconnah Pottery in Tennessee, where he and his mother produced “paste on paste” cameo wares similar to Wedgwood’s Jasperwares. In 1913, he moved to the Asheville area, where he produced a variety of pottery until his death in1961.

The early Nonconnah pieces are dominated by matte-green glazes with floral designs. The later works made at the Pisgah Forest Pottery range from small, brightly glazed teapots and cups to monumental baptismal fonts. Cameo depictions of the American West include covered wagons, Indians hunting Buffalo and portraits of Bill Cody. Stephen also used imagery of the South such as mountain cabins, fiddlers and Gen. Robert E. Lee. His forms and glazes, particularly the crystalline glaze, were inspired by Asian ceramics.

Two events are planned in connection with the exhibition:

On June 21, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. the museum will host a reception, a gallery talk and a book signing featuring Rodney Leftwich, author of “Pisgah Forest and Nonconnah: The Potteries of Walter B. Stephen.”

From 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Friday, June 22, McKissick will host a symposium, “The Art of Collecting Southern Pottery.”  Leftwich, Karen Swager of Brunk Auctions, crystalline potter Frank Neef, Winton Eugene and Rosa Eugene of Pottery by Eugene, and Barbara S. Perry, who writes about  American ceramics, will participate.

The symposium is $40 for museum members and $50 for non-members.

Museum Hours: Monday-Friday: 8:30 am - 5 pm. Saturday: 11 am - 3 pm. Closed Sundays and all University and State holidays.
Open to the public free of charge.

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