Northern Lights at Contemporary Ceramics Centre in April

Vessels | Gunilla Maria Åkesson
 | Image Dee Honeybun

We head into April with our latest exhibition - Northern Lights which is sponsored by The Hargreaves and Ball Trust. This is the first of two exhibitions this year showing the work of international makers. Northern Lights brings together three Scandinavian artists; Gunilla Maria Åkesson, Maria Kristofersson and Jussi Ojala. Both Gunilla and Jussi present cylindrical vessels, given presence and drama through scale and individual approaches to working with glaze. Maria Kristofersson works with box-like forms, which can be seen as three-dimensional drawings.

Gunilla Maria Åkesson's vessels are slowly constructed, "a daily meditation", where she seeks to discover "the potential of the work I have in front of me".This is a process of seeking to find out what story the pot has to tell and can take 3 to 4 weeks per piece, a method which leads her to produce work in series, using "the same kind of basic shapes that in some way have always existed."

Vessel | Jussi Ojala
Image Dee Honeybun

Jussi Ojala's path has been an idiosyncratic one. After a few years as an apprentice and a year of education, working with wood firing, in his own words: "since 1985 I've found my own way through struggles and experiments." His work is inspired both by nature and seasonality and by the material; the processes and experiments. The resulting objects ooze with an energy seeming to burst out of the form. Rupturing glazes obscure the outlines of shapes that are themselves warped and trembling.

Maria Kristofersson | Vessels
Image Dee Honeybun

Maria Kristofersson trained in drawing and painting and was initially not attracted to ceramics, but the material seduced her: "the clay provides both resistance and guidance." She works with box-like forms which she describes as having "both space and body, an inside and an outside. [They] can be seen as three-dimensional drawings." Her twice-fired unglazed earthenware pieces specifically resist function.

The exhibition runs from the 12th April to the 12th May 2018

Our previous exhibition Matthew Chambers | Ensemble opened with a packed preview evening on Wednesday 14th March.  After all the snow, it was perfect timing with a glorious spring day to set up the evening. 

Matthew Chambers during the preview evening for Ensemble
Image Claire Dixon

It was lovely to see Matthew again - he was with us the previous Sunday to help install his exhibition.  Whilst setting up, Matthew was talking to us about this new body of work.  Continuing with his exploration of constructed layers, Matthew has pushed his boundaries of form and process.  Complex constructions combine multiple forms or take on Chameleon-like properties.  With nearly 50 pieces on display, Ensemble highlights this process-led journey from his earlier orbs through to new multiple complex constructions.

Matthew Chambers |  Ensemble | Chameleon Down |
 Image Dee Honeybun

Porcelain3 exhibition with snow in Great Russell Street.

On Display | March 2018

Sue Hanna

Lorna Fraser

Ali Tomlin

March is the start of our new display feature.  On display are Sue Hanna and Carina Ciscatto, with new arrivals this week from Ali Tomlin, Peter Bodenham and Lorna Fraser.

Carina Ciscatto

Peter Bodenham 

To continue with the theme of our blog posts, we are asking each maker to tell us something about their practice, and the routes they took when first discovering clay.

Each week a new artist is added, and this week we are featuring Ali Tomlin.

Ali Tomlin

"My work is frequently described as calming and the idea of ceramics being mood altering is also an appealing and interesting one."  

Ali Tomlin in her studio 

"I came to ceramics after a successful and rewarding career in design. For twenty years it was a large part of my creative life and so certainly has been an influence on my style of making. While this route is not the traditional one, it has given me experience - of art and design and business - which has shaped my style and approach. 

I learned to throw at Putney School of Art with John Dawson (a Selected member of the Craft Potters Association). After a few years I took part in his idyllic masterclasses in his garden (it always seemed to be sunny). Having reached a point where my commute was now much longer and feeling that it was maybe time for a change, classes were the final persuasion I needed to make the move to full-time pottery. Since then I have mainly been self-taught, boosted by occasional workshops with potters such as Carolyn Genders and Gareth Mason and of course, youtube! I now work from my studio at home. 

Ali Tomlin | Four Cups

I have always drawn and designed and love the energy of random lines or marks, from a sketch, painting or found on stones or peeling paint. I constantly explore and am inspired by these elements, with photography and painting alongside my pottery. 

My work is a collection of thrown, porcelain forms. I’m interested in variety that can be found through repetition of form; shapes are kept simple with the white porcelain as a consistent background to a growing palette of colours and marks. I work on the clay when the pots are dry, using the chalky surface to apply and move stains, oxides and slips, splashing or sponging away areas and inlaying lines. I mostly work on the wheel, for both throwing and decorating, aiming to capture a feeling of movement and spontaneity. I usually leave work unglazed, resulting in a soft, matt and very tactile surface. It actually feels quite a lot like paper when it’s lightly sanded, perhaps a reference back to my design and drawing origins? This surface encourages handling and there is a connection once things are touched; people engage, they trace the lines around the pots with their fingers. My work is frequently described as calming and the idea of ceramics being mood altering is also an appealing and interesting one. 

Ali Tomlin | Vessel 

Ali Tomlin in her studio

When I first came across the CPA I was really encouraged and excited by the contemporary nature of the work, the quality and the professional approach and the idea of ceramics as both for use and as art. CPA potters manage to sit in both the camp of the craftsperson and the artist, which is where I hope to place myself. For me, neither needs to be exclusive of the other. The CPA membership demonstrates the enormous breadth of skill, creativity and experience contemporary potters have and also, excitingly, the increasing interest that people have in this work. 

Ali Tomlin | Deep Bowls

All of my work is thrown porcelain. I use Studio porcelain from Clayman in Chichester, the owner Reg Griggs is hugely knowledgeable, which has been really helpful for a potter who’s making it up as she goes along! 

Work is fired in an electric, top loading kiln approx Ø60cm to 1285 degrees. One day I’ll move to a larger kiln, but for now, it does the job." Ali Tomlin 2018

Ali Tomlin | Open Bowl

  

Contemporary Ceramics Centre in conversation with Lorna Fraser

Why do you do what you do?

"I’ve never lost my love of working with clay and I just thrive on the process of making."

Lorna Fraser

I fell in love with ceramics as soon as I tried it in my first year at art school. At that moment there was no turning back and I knew that clay was the material for me and I wanted to work in 3 dimensions. I’ve never lost my love of working with clay and I just thrive on the process of making.

Lorna in her Edinburgh studio (image courtesy of the artist)

Contemporary Ceramics Centre

What is your background / What route did you take when starting with clay; did it include formal education or an informal route?

Lorna Fraser

My Dad was a brilliant engineer and was always making things, usually out of metal or wood, so from an early age I was happiest when I was making things too. The only career I ever considered was to go to art school and was fortunate enough to get a place at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, which was just as well as I never had a plan B! 








Contemporary Ceramics Centre

How do you work?

Seedlings
 Image by Shannon Tofts

Lorna Fraser 

I am lucky enough to have a beautiful studio in the heart of Edinburgh. My studio is in a large building with over 50 artists. This has been a real advantage to my practice as I work in an enriching environment with painters, weavers, jewellers, printmakers as well as other ceramicists. This has fed my creativity and given me the confidence to incorporate other disciplines like printmaking and sculpture into my work. I don’t do detailed drawings, preferring to scribble initial ideas into my sketchbook but finalising my designs in clay.
I’m not a morning person and love nothing better than settling down in my studio, with Radio 4 playing in the background, and working late into the evening

Contemporary Ceramics Centre

Who were the inspirational people during this time or events that influenced your practice and /or learning? 

Seedlings  Image by Shannon Tofts

Lorna Fraser I am inspired by many artists and potters but one always comes to the front of my mind first. When I was an art student (many years ago) Colin Pearson came and did a masterclass for us. He was completely inspirational and made a massive impression that has always stayed with me. When I am in London I always go and look at his beautiful work in the V&A collection.
My studio is a ten minute walk from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh where I gather most of my inspiration. I am particularly lucky to have full access to the huge collection of dried, pressed plant specimens, seed pods and pickled fruits housed in the garden’s herbarium.

Contemporary Ceramics Centre

Did you overcome any challenges or obstacles? What were they?
How has your practice changed over time?

Lorna Fraser My work changed dramatically about 15 years ago. I used to make very richly decorated lustrous caskets inspired by Medieval reliquaries, but one day almost overnight I realised I had reached the end of the road with that work. I had had enough of colour and just stopped. I packed away all my glazes and lustres, ordered some samples of porcelain clay and started afresh. In hindsight it seems a rash thing to do but I have never regretted it.

Seedlings Image by Shannon Tofts

I had just got my first garden, it was winter time and I was surrounded by all these incredible plant shapes and structures. I still find plenty of inspiration in the botanical world although tiny bits of colour and surface decoration are just beginning to creep back into my work.

I had just got my first garden, it was winter time and I was surrounded by all these incredible plant shapes and structures. I still find plenty of inspiration in the botanical world although tiny bits of colour and surface decoration are just beginning to creep back into my work.

Contemporary Ceramics Centre

How does working with clay influence your life beyond the workshop?

Lorna Fraser

Working with clay is an integral part of my life. I am constantly observing things around me, taking photographs and looking for the new ideas.Clay has opened up many opportunities for me. I have been on a design exchange trip facilitated by the British Council which involved exchanging ideas with Thai makers. They taught me the importance of sharing knowledge, passing on your skills and working for the good of your community.
In September last year I was representing Scotland at the Cheongju International Craft Biennale in South Korea. I was funded by Creative Scotland to go out there and network with makers and curators. I have been working closely with a tropical botanist at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, where we have been using my work as a way of discussing environmental issues. I had exhibited a large installation inspired the papery fruits of a tropical tree that grows in the Malaysian rainforests. We have given several talks together using that piece of work to talk about deforestation.With the same botanist (and Edinburgh University) I am now working on a new project looking at bio-degradable plastics with a view to exhibiting new ceramic work that will include these plastics. This will hopefully help to highlight the single-use plastics crisis.

Seedlings (detail) Image by Shannon Tofts

Contemporary Ceramics Centre

What advice would you give to others starting with clay?

Lorna Fraser

Work hard and don’t worry about making mistakes. I love playing with new ideas and never think of it as a waste of time. Even if these “playdays” come to nothing that very process will keep your love of clay alive.

Peter Bodenham In conversation with Contemporary Ceramics Centre

'For me, I wake up every day excited at the prospect of walking along the shoreline, making, thinking and talking about ideas and pots.'

Peter Bodenham | The pottery at St. Dogmaels

Contemporary Ceramics Centre

Why do you do what you do?

Peter Bodenham

I’m a potter because I love the challenge of being a maker working within a craft tradition as well as the challenge of trying to make work that is relevant to today. I make utilitarian wheel thrown ceramics from my workshop within a coastal village in West Wales near Cardigan. I am also concerned with developing and facilitating socially engaged art / conceptual design projects. Part of my working week is teaching ceramics & 3D at Bath Spa University. 

Contemporary Ceramics Centre
What is your background/ What route did you take when starting with clay; did it include formal education or an informal route?

Peter Bodenham Three Bowls | Image Nigel Goldsmith

Peter Bodenham

My first encounter with clay was as a child hanging out at the local pottery in the late 1970s and early 1980s near St.Dogmaels village where I still live and work. I grew up on a smallholding milking cows by hand and generally making things within the spirit of self-suffiency. My school in Cardigan had a pottery teacher and I went on from there to do a Foundation at Carmarthen School of Art where the potters Melanie Brown and Pete Goodrich were a great influence. I completed a BA in Ceramics in the mid 1980s at Camberwell School of Art where I received a fantastic ceramic education. Tutors included Gillian Lowndes, Janice Tchalenko, Ewan Henderson, Glenys Barton, Alison Britton, John Ford to name just a few of the amazing staff during that period. Leaving Art College I received great support from Anatol Orient whist making ceramic sculpture. In the mid 1990s I returned to education and completed an MA in Fine Art at UWIC, Cardiff.

Contemporary Ceramics Centre
How do you work?

Peter Bodenham

Bottle and Shot Glasses | Image Nigel Goldsmith

I attempt to build ideas of locational identity into my pots. I aim to capture a sense of place though mark making and the selections of clays. I use a variety of clays, producing both earthenware and cone 5 raw fired stoneware pots to create formal contrasting effects, light and dark, shiny and matt. I combine sympathetic materials such as metal and wood, tea pots often include hand made steam bent handles, copper and stainless steel boat finings. I use local wood ash, clays as glaze ingredients, recording and exploring their locational origin and chemical properties that help to form a wider cultural narrative.

Contemporary Ceramics Centre
What has been a seminal/inspirational moment?

Peter Bodenham

A seminal inspirational moment happened when I was ten whilst on Holiday in St.Ives in 1975. Myself and my family visited the Leach Pottery and Barbara Hepworth’s studio and garden in weeks following her death. I believe her friends temporally opened the garden to the public; this was way before the Tate acquired the studio. I played between the large bronze sculptures and was fascinated by tools, materials and the studio space.

Contemporary Ceramics Centre
What is your favourite pot or artwork?

Peter Bodenham

The work of Nadine Sterk and Lonny van Ryswyck two current Dutch designer makers known as Atelier NL. In 2017 I visited their studio in Eindhoven to discuss their work. I have always been excited by Northern European design craft and it’s openness to ideas and material enquiry.

Peter Bodenham Mug | Image Dee Honeybun

Contemporary Ceramics Centre
What role does the potter have in society?

Peter Bodenham

I would guess the role of the potter in society is for many a utopic creative form of social enquiry as much as a provider of functional or sculptural ceramics. Personally, I really enjoy the engagement and exchanges with customers when they come into my workshop, visitors can see me make and the methods of production. Seeing the maker and the site of production is a fairly rare experience today where many objects are a product of a homogenized global production network.

Contemporary Ceramics Centre

How has your practice changed over time?

Peter Bodenham

Throughout my education and making career, I have moved between the worlds of art, design and craft. For the last six years, I have been making utilitarian pots which is where I feel happiest and most challenged. Currently, my research deals with ideas about locational identity within ceramics and conceptual design/craft culture. This feeds my ceramic practice and informs my academic career within education.

Peter Bodenham Teapot | Image Dee Honeybun

Contemporary Ceramics Centre

How does working with clay influence your life beyond the workshop?

Peter Bodenham

A good friend Simon Petite used to make pots with ‘has life ruined your art and art ruined your life?’ printed on the surface, pointing, tongue in cheek, to the fact that life and making cannot be separated. For me, I wake up every day excited at the prospect of walking along the shoreline, making, thinking and talking about ideas and pots.

Carina Ciscato

Carina Ciscato 

Discovering Clay

I always say that ceramics chose me. 

I was trained as an industrial designer, and I was specializing in furniture design in Germany when I accidentally popped into a ceramic studio near my house. And that was it! I realized that there was no difference between making a teapot or a chair because it's all about aesthetics; form, function, balance, and proportion. 

...but...I discovered clay. Clay is a wonderful material, soft, malleable, organic, fluid, but through the firing process transforms itself and becomes solid and strong. It can take any shape or form. 

Learning About Clay

Carina Ciscato | Constructed Pots 2018

I have no formal ceramic education, and through apprenticeship, short courses and residency I have learned and worked with different clays in different parts of the world. I am fascinated with it. Each clay body has its own potential, its own quality; it's an endless exploration and a continuous conversation between the maker and the material. 

Process And Form

Carina Ciscato | Constructed Pots 2018

Now I am interested in how a particular clay interacts with the different forms, what it adds on top of what there is to see, how it bounces and reflects, and how it can reinforce an idea…. listening and giving it a space to be. I always liked to be true to the process, leaving all the making marks exposed using a monochromatic palette to emphasize the forms - and as the work evolves throughout the years to start asking new questions.

Now I'm also looking to be true to the material. I'm exploring the clay body. Starting with porcelain because of its openness and purity, adding colour and texture to see what new relationships and conversations open between pieces.  I'm interested in these conversations,  seeing the qualities... roughness,  softness, contrasts, the multiplicity of possibilities...

Carina Ciscato | Constructed Cups Set 2018

There is an interesting parallel between what one does and how we perceive ourselves... 

Making objects is a wonderful way to express and portray thoughts and ideas. 

Carina Ciscatto March 2018

Sue Hanna in conversation with Contemporary Ceramics Centre

'An important part of my practise is to walk, it is a time to consider my work'

Sue Hanna | Image Polly Thomas

Contemporary Ceramics Centre 

How were you first drawn to working with clay?

Sue Hanna

I trained as a sculptor at St Martin’s School of Art in London, originally working with wood & metal.
We used clay to make maquettes to work through ideas, I always loved how spontaneous these small working sculptures were and often they were much more powerful and accomplished than the finished wood or metal pieces that followed.


Contemporary Ceramics Centre 
What route did you take when first starting out; did it include formal education or an informal route? 

Sue Hanna
My journey with fired clay started in the late nineties, a chance encounter with a South African potter proved instrumental in developing my interest in ceramics. Shortly after that I met my now husband Ashraf Hanna - together we became enthralled and excited by the material – we read books, went on short courses, visited exhibitions and most importantly experimented. 

Sue Hanna | Large Kuba Pot

Contemporary Ceramics Centre 

Who were the inspirational people during this time or events that influenced your practice and/or learning?

Sue Hanna
I often visited the old Contemporary Ceramics Gallery in Marshall Street and was drawn to the burnished smoke fired works of David Roberts, Gabriele Koch, Antonia Salmon and Duncan Ross. I also greatly admired the burnished and smoked African and South American pots that I visited over and over again in the museums in London. Then in 1997 I came across an advert in the Ceramic Review for a workshop in Kalamoudi, Evia, Greece run by a ceramic artist Alan Bain – it was life changing for both myself and Ashraf.
In Greece working with the very patient, knowledgeable Alain Bain we built pots, worked with terra sigillata slips, acquired burnishing skills and had our first pit firing – we were hooked on those newly discovered techniques! 

Sue Hanna | Two Large Bowls

Contemporary Ceramics Centre 
Tell us about any obstacles or challenges you had to overcome.
Sue Hanna
Smoke firing in Hackney, London was a little problematic – we had to work after dark so as not to antagonize anyone, but that wasn’t easy. Also in order to be able to afford London’s very high living expenses and studio rents we had to work as well as try to make ceramics; so we decided to escape to the country and we moved to Pembrokeshire, West Wales to be able to concentrate entirely on making ceramics.


Contemporary Ceramics Centre 
How has your practice changed over time?

Sue Hanna
When I first started out my work was solely connected to the human form. My interest in tribal art helped me to develop an appreciation of the power of simplicity which led to exploring the figure in the abstract.
I then became interested in the geometric symbols and rhythmic designs that I observed in African textiles and I now use the vessel form as a canvas on which to explore pattern, rhythm and texture. 

Sue Hanna | Large Kuba Bowl

Contemporary Ceramics Centre 

How does working with clay influence your life beyond the workshop?

Sue Hanna
An important part of my practise is to walk, it is a time to consider my work – often on these walks in the fields and beaches here in Pembrokeshire I discovered clay which I collect and use to make slips to decorate some of my work.

Ashraf and I are both ceramicists, we work together, we constantly discuss clay, forms and ideas.

Our whole year is planned around ceramic exhibitions and fairs

Our children very much enjoy working with clay and whenever the opportunity arises we hold workshops at school to give other children the opportunity to experience this wonderful material!

Contemporary Ceramics Centre
What advice would you give to others starting with clay?

Sue Hanna

Go to events where you can watch demonstrations
Read a lot about techniques
Experiment
Don’t become precious about the objects you make when starting out

Exhibitions 2018

Porcelain3 15th February - 10th March 2018 

L to R | Katharina Klug, Jo Davies, Anja Lubach

The private view was busy and it was lovely to see Jo Davies, Anja Lubach and Katharina Klug.  

The exhibition brought together three makers who work with porcelain.  All makers work from the wheel, throwing porcelain...but it is there that the similarity stops.  The black, and white vessels by Jo Davies act as striking sculptural vases.  Take away the flowers and the pieces become sculptural forms with off-centre necks and bulbous bases. Anja Lubach is well known for her thrown porcelain vessels, the surfaces of which are disturbed by indented and protruding faces and skulls. For this exhibition we are introduced to obscured imagery, often barely visible through dripped layers.  Each piece by Katharina Klug is individually made from porcelain on the potter’s wheel. Katharina's monochrome palette is highlighted with a controlled use of colour to draw attention to interior spaces. Porcelain3 runs until 10th March 2018.