On the Surface: Contemporary Ceramic
Georgian Terrace Vessel, Helen Beard, porcelain (photo: Michael Harvey)
Blackwell’s latest ceramic offering looks at the work of six makers who focus on the surface decoration of their work. On the Surface: Contemporary Ceramics is on show at the Lake District’s Arts and Crafts House until 19 April.
The exhibition presents a group of ceramics in which the surface decoration – whether it’s pictorial or abstract – is just as important as the form of the vessel. Half the makers represented treat their white porcelain bases in an almost painterly manner, often decorating it with pictorial scenes. Helen Beard is a talented water-colourist and she uses this skill to draw naïve, vigorous sketches of everyday subjects such as buildings, figures swimming, animals and plants on her pots. Lowri Davies’s ceramics are also decorated with pictorial motifs, but in her case they are normally directly connected with her Welsh heritage – be it native flowers, local buildings or typical Welsh figures. Similarly Adam Frew treats his vessels as a canvas, drawing, dripping and scorching directly onto the wet clay sketches of buildings or domestic objects – although he also enjoys abstract patterning.
The other three exhibitors work in a more abstract style. Sara Moorhouse creates open bowls worked with bold coloured stripes that seem to undulate, recalling the movement and colours in remembered landscapes. Sarah Dunstan embellishes her surfaces with flat, delicate trailing patterns, while Annabel Faraday prints maps and other images on to her stoneware to create vessels with a very particular sense of place.
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