Ceramics at Rochester Art Gallery
Left, Dobin Tea Pot, right, Pond Bowls, both by Akiko Hirai, 2009 (images by Toshiko Hirai)
Fusion, a new exhibition running until 15 November at Rochester Art Gallery, explores the continuing relationship between Japanese and European ceramics
This is a small, well-balanced show, focusing on the work of just four ceramists, two Japanese and two British. Kaori Tatebayashi and Jonathan Wade seem less directly influenced by Japan than Akiko Hirai and Dan Kelly, although Tatebayashi perfectly sums up the ‘fusion’ the exhibition explores as she was bought up in the Japanese ceramics centre of Kyoto and trained at London’s RCA. Here she’s showing her white, unglazed clay sculptures of everyday objects. They’re understated pieces, but they pack a great emotional punch. Wade also works in a limited palette, but his work is less emotional and more architectural. For Fusion he’s arranged a series of glazed stoneware vessels on three ceramic trays, cramming them together to look like the towers of a medieval city. It’s an interesting, complex and non-functional way of treating a group of deliberately simple pots.
Akiko Hirai and Dan Kelly are both influenced to a greater or lesser extent by the Japanese tea ceremony. Hirai creates tea bowls directly recalling the ritual, while Kelly claims the raw, ash-glazed tea wares as a source of inspiration for his vigorous sculptural forms.
www.medway.gov.uk/arts
