Another interesting exhibition at Bevere Gallery in Worcester.
Adam Buick:
Buick's jar are made from locally dug clay.
The distinctive appearance of Peter Hayes' ceramic sculptures comes from the techniques like Raku firing to which he subjects them, but also from the fact that he submerges them in the flowing river beside his studio, or sends them to Cornwall to be washed in the sea for months at a time. The water washes minerals such as copper and metal oxides into the basic white clay with which he works, creating a characteristic green-blue blush in his sculptures along with random elements that make every piece unique. The effect is to create objects that look ancient, and perhaps even a little alien. His creations are generally finished by waxing and polishing.
Over the course of several years, Hayes worked as a ceramic artist with tribes and village potters who inspired him with the exquisite work they produced using very limited technology and tools. Moving to India, Nepal, Japan, Korea and New Mexico, he found similar skills and adopted the techniques he learned.
O'Donohue's current ceramic work is developed directly from drawings of landscape and the endless possibilities in natural forms, textures and colours. He makes wheel thrown and hand-built ceramics using an extensive range of mark making, drawing and painting techniques to create individual and expressive decorative pieces.
Griffin is a figurative artist who specialises in ceramic sculpture and fine art painting. She is directly inspired by the woodland where she often explores places in which to 'breathe'. The texture, the smells, the secret spaces all provide a kind of 'awakening'. She uses the figure to help communicate a sense of deeper meaning within humankind and of her experience of being a woman. The sculptures represent a state of being: internal struggles of love, loss, displacement, vulnerability and strength.
'I wish to evoke 'feeling' and mirror 'gesture' through the use of fast marks, quick making techniques and sketches. My work sometimes has an unfinished quality which adds to the idea that the figure is a suggestion of a living being rather than a still ornamental object. It is important to me that my figures have an identity and are able to connect with an audience in a non physical sense...
My ideas, feelings and thoughts are directly conveyed into the clay using the minimum of tools. The clay picks up every gestural mark, mirroring me... I push it around. The clay is almost part of me. It's my friend, a connectivity. A way of self expression without words'.
Jemma Gowland:
In her work with white grogged stoneware and porcelain paperclay, Gowland explores the way that girls are constrained from birth to conform to an appearance and code of behaviour to present a perfect face and maintain the expectations of others. The disrupted surfaces describe the vulnerability beneath.
Bronwen Grieves:
Grieve's works strive to balance structure with fluidity, using organic and inorganic forms as a reference point. Largely self-taught, she builds and fires all her work in her garden studio in Nottingham. Her work in informed by her extensive collection of mid-century modernist objects and her passion for gardening. As a ceramicist she has been developing her craft using flat coils which are incised with horizontal or vertical lines before being fixed together. She builds her pieces using grogged stoneware primarily in black and white; glaze is used sparingly, often limited to slips which are partially rubbed away to reveal the texture and colour beneath.
'Growing up on the beautiful, isolated island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea I was shaped by the natural world. From early on I was fascinated by sea foam on the sand, rain glistening on granite or the cracked and crazed bed of a dried up summer stream. I trained as a fashion designer but discovered ceramics six years ago and have been obssessed by its possibilities ever since. The interaction of clay, oxides and glaze fascinates me and I have used every spare moment of explore this. I think nature is extraordinary and I seek to captures its beauty in my work'.
'In my practice I aim to incorporate texture and narrative, often creating very simple forms that will carry the intended message. My work is hand built or cast, integrating textures, colours and oxides. The narrative may be developed within a single vessel, or by combining numerous elements for wall displays or installations'.
Charlotte Voden:
Finally, two paintings by Janet James:
Summer Lake
Umbrian Landscape IV
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