Illustrious Wonderers - Exhibition Nov. 2010

Illustrious Wonderers
Paul Scott UK, Kurt Weiser USA, Stephen Bowers AU

Exhibition October 30 - November 26 2010

Illustrations in porcelain from the Danish Stigsnæsværk to Arizona and Australia.
Humour, satire and story telling by three acknowledged international artists.
Paul Scott, Kurt Weiser and Stephen Bowers exhibit together for the first time at this exhibition in Copenhagen.
The viewer is guided wandering around the world and into each of the exhibitors personal magic place of illustrious porcelain.
The exhibition visualizes the cultural differences between Europe, America and Australia.
Here are pieces with an innocent elegance, that don't usually hold satire, social critique or political comments; but at a closer look the details open up for endless stories and meanings, and layer by layer reveal the artists knowledge and humour.

Paul Scott is an artist known for his research into ceramics and print. He creates individual pieces that are exacting and critical, blurring the boundaries between fine art and design.
His work involves the digital manipulation of established vocabularies of printed motif, pattern and image from industrial ceramic archives and engraved book illustration. Cloning and collaging these, sometimes with photographic elements, he creates contemporary artworks in ceramic and printed form.

Paul Scott lives in a rural area, Cumbria, North West England. However, he has gained international prominence for his ceramic work as well as his ceramic research, writing and curating activities. In 2005 he was awarded a Phd Bursary at MIRAD, Manchester Metropolitan University (www.miriad.mmu.ac.uk) for his project: 'Ceramics Landscape Memory and Confection'.
Paul Scott tells about his work for this exhibition: “Soda and salt glazed cups, bowls and plates, together with wood fired trees are the results of a series of wood firings in Denmark and Hungary.
The wood fired objects play on the methodology of production, the resultant artefact and the words and language used to describe them. They are also beautiful objects - the flash of flame or soda/salt glaze and the bleeding cobalt print - expressive graphic qualities imbued by fire and process, complemented by gold splash or painted line...”
www.cumbrianblues.com

Kurt Weiser is Internationally recognized as a contemporary ceramic artist and educator. Weiser is known for his technical virtuosity with porcelain forms and his use of china painting techniques in a distinct contemporary style. His subject matter illustrates lush, mysterious landscapes and distorted narratives set amidst colour-saturated flora and fauna that read as voyeuristic candid snapshots of the human condition.
This exhibition shows a salt-fired earthenware vase complimented by a series of blue and white cups, tall cylindrical vases and a 'teapot' painted in black and white. The illustrations challenge and surprise the viewer all the way around the forms with a continuous dreamlike narrative. www.contemporarycraft.org/The_Store/Kurt_Weiser.html

Stephen Bowers ceramic pieces may reflect ideas about recollection and persistence in the form of remnants and shards; and be about how sections of memory survive; and utilise borders, patterns, overlaps, edges and shadows. He regularly retrieves and re-positions images, representing ‘the familiar’, often sourcing ‘clichéd’ images (i.e. blue and white, willow pattern, wallpapers, natural history illustrations, etc.) within a personal contemporary context, often with a surreal, whimsical, humorous, sceptical or satirical subtext.
Stephen Bowers tells: My aim is to make people look - and to look again; encouraging viewers to observe, react, consider, discover and re-consider.
I make both production and exhibition work, using hand craft skills informed (but not driven) by ideas with origins in the theory and study of images, their historical recall and reproduction and perception, and giving reference to the contexts and crossovers of visual arts with traditions, trade, travel, politics, science and exploration.
Compositionally, juxtaposition is important and I work in a kind of ‘mash up’ way; perhaps tongue-in-cheek, but always selectively, deliberatively and with an element of homage in mind. My work presents fictive tableaux, sectional or shard-like conjunctions, forming mosaic-like narratives of observation, conjecture and inquiry, often with a surreal, whimsical, humorous, sceptical or satirical subtext.
The skull is one of a series of 'skulls' of Australian fictive, legendary historical figures or real identities and/or literary characters (i.e. the English equivalent might be Sherlock Holmes, Jeeves, Boswell's Johnson, Hereward the Wake, etc).
www.robingibson.net/artists/stephen-bowers

Cumulus - Exhibition October 2010

Cumulus
Bente Skjøttgaard DK
Exhibition October 2 – 28 2010

Thematic exhibition of new ceramic work by Bente Skjøttgaard.
Bente Skjøttgaard's interest for the 'higher spheres' began two years ago, during her first visit to South Korea where she discovered the country's ceramic tradition. Soon after, her first clouds were born, sort of growths where interlaced columbine structures rise above very fine 'trunks'... (*quote of text for her exhibition “in the clouds” at Galerie Maria Lund, Paris. www.marialund.com Photo: Ole Akhøj

Bente Skjøttgaard tells: ”It is a play with forms and colour, variations of something as contradictory as making airy and light clouds in the heavy clay.
The pink colour is the colour that clouds get after the sun has set. A kind of reflection. The level lines appear as those of the horizon. I like when the wildly grown organic - that has no specific form and in reality could continue infinitely - are cut through by straight sharp lines."
www.skjoettgaard.dk

Bente Skjøttgaard participates in ”Traces”, as one of 12 artists selected by the Danish National Art Foundation for the project 'Hærvejen' at Vejen Art Museum www.kunst.dk/billedkunst/kunstidetoffrum/haervejen

About clouds...
Cumulus clouds are a type of cloud with noticeable vertical development and clearly defined edges. Cumulus means "heap" or "pile" in Latin. They are often described as "puffy" or "cotton-like" in appearance. Cumulus clouds may appear alone, in lines, or in clusters.
Cumulus clouds are often precursors of other types of clouds, such as cumulonimbus, when influenced by weather factors such as instability, moisture, and temperature gradient.
Cumulus clouds are part of the larger family of cumuliform clouds, which include cumulus, cumulus congestus, and cumulonimbus clouds, among others.

The most intense cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds may be associated with severe weather phenomena such as hail, waterspouts and tornadoes.
Cumulus humilis clouds, appearing as small- or medium-sized puffy shapes in the sky, often occur in times of fair weather.
However, cumulus clouds can grow into cumulonimbus clouds which may produce heavy rain, lightning, severe and strong winds, hail, and even tornadoes.
Cumulus congestus clouds, which appear as towers, will often grow into cumulonimbus storm clouds.
(Text freely quoted from Wikipedia) www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulus
http://www.vildtvejrsklubben.dk/
www.dmi.dk/dmi/himlens_vejrudsigt_fraorientering.pdf

Diamonds are... Exhibition September 2010

Diamonds are...
Karen Bennicke DK
Exhibition 2 – 30 september 2010

Thematic exhibition of new ceramic objects by Karen Bennicke, DK
Diamonds are.. pure luxuriation.
Metaphors for beauty, dream and fantasy.
Diamonds breed mystic and mythology - even crime and murder.
Diamonds build material for evergreens.
Diamonds also generate inspiration to other facet objects.
Sculptural variations of the classic brilliant-cut - 'Correct cut'.
Made in the simple materials as clay and glaze.

Karen Bennicke
"My works are spatial visions. Constructions – reminiscent of architecture – that constitute a kind of form-bearing membranes between the exterior and the interior. Light and subsequently shadow, of course, are the main agents in a process of intuitive, mathematical building up of sculptures – which are operating in the field between something distinct, with rather recognizable, functional references, and something undefined, that takes place between the harmonious and the almost chaotic. I try to eliminate the distance between the logical/concrete world of form, that we know from everyday life, and the illogical, unknown and absurd."

Karen Bennicke exhibits in Denmark and internationally. She works thematic with sculpture, wall objects and architectural commissions. She is a member of the Danish Fine Artists Association - BKF (Billedkunstnernes Forbund), the Danish Artist Society (Kunstnersamfundet) and International Academy of Ceramics – IAC. www.karenbennicke.dk

Setups - Exhibition August 2010

Setups
Lone Skov Madsen & Turi Heisselberg Pedersen DK
Exhibition August 5 – 28 2010

The two ceramic artists have found inspiration in the storage space, the depot. Last year this interest resulted in the exhibition 'Time Out' at the Danish Museum of Art and Design (Kunstindustrimuseet), where their ceramic pieces were exhibited interacting with the Museum pieces.

This exhibition has developed from their own studio stock and holds a wide spectrum of their individual pieces in dialogue, randomly set up or neatly arranged. The viewer is invited to investigate the 'setups' echoing the funny appearances in a depot where things are put aside or sorted.

Lone Skov Madsen's pieces are intense studies of form. The sculptural objects often have white 'dotted' surfaces or layers of glaze in dark nuances.
Lone Skov Madsen

Turi Heisselberg Pedersen's ceramic pieces link to the traditional context of ceramics. The vases, jars and bowls reflect architectural details or artefacts in our surroundings creating space and visualisation by the use of tactility and colour.
Turi Heisselberg Pedersen

Lone Skov Madsen and Turi Heisselberg Pedersen have exhibited together both in Denmark and International; for example at the exhibitions: ’Kilns of Denmark’ at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, ’Statistic-Ceramic - New Danish Ceramics' at Röhsska Museum, Göteborg and Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, and presently at the 'XXIe Biennale de Vallauris' in France.

Things in Commom - June 2010

Things in Common
Prue Venables & Kirsten Coelho AU, Ann Linnemann DK
Exhibition 3 June – 3 July 2010

The two Australian ceramic artists Kirsten Coelho and Prue Venables exhibit together with Danish artist Ann Linnemann. All of them work with unique functional hand-thrown porcelain pieces, that contains a kind of 'story'. They met in England and later Australia, where they discovered various similarities in form language, idea, material and working methods. They have exhibited together in Australia and currently show their work at this collaborative exhibition in Denmark.

Things in Common – from Australia to Denmark

Kirsten Coelho ”finds beauty in the decay of iron. Eternally balanced and still, confident in the space they inhabit, her works also bear stigmata-like marks of mortality and poignant change. This exhibition includes opalescent and matt white glazed forms punctuated or banded with judiciously applied iron oxide. Other pieces have cool celadon glazes resting on rims and shoulders above iron-rich tenmoku glaze, forming a delicate transitional zone, suggestive of landscapes and mist-shrouded skylines.”
(text by Stephen Bowers, AU).
http://kirstencoelho.srivilasa.com/

Prue Venables “makes the shift to porcelain the natural step for anyone looking for hardness and ringing clarity. Her objects are confidently utilitarian, with deliberate but understated echoes of the purposeful crispness and functionality found in laboratory funnels and crucibles. Venables wears her technical mastery lightly. Her resilient pieces are completely explicable to common sense as they glow softly with reflected light and colour. Delicately referencing materials like metal, stone and glass in a way that is unexpected, her household objects acquire an element of paradox that enlarges the imagination.”
(text by Stephen Bowers, AU).
Prue Venables: Mossgreen gallery - artists & Beaver galleries

Ann Linnemann shows in this new work her fascination of the decorative, story-telling image interacting with the functional object. The translucent porcelain pieces show 'landscapes' painted in alkalic ash glazes and ceramic crayons. She searches in her own language and new materials to express relationships between image and decoration in poetic, sensitive 'water colour' brush strokes describing the landscape, changes in nature, lines on the horizon or abstract dream motives, the atmosphere or scene of a landscape, a culture. The personal 'things' link her visions and memories to the everyday experience and ritual. Ann Linnemann

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body and by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.’ Logo: www.australiacouncil.gov.au/aboutus/logos
Furthermore acknowledgement to the Arts Victoria http://www.arts.vic.gov.au/

Contrast - Exhibition May 2010

Contrast
Sten Lykke Madsen & Marianne Nielsen DK

Exhibition 7 – 29 May 2010

Sten Lykke Madsen & Marianne Nielsen exhibit their narrative work at this joint exhibition, where the fabulous raw and mysterious figures of Sten Lykke contrast Mariannes fine themes from hair pieces to 'knitting' in porcelain.

Ceramics in contrast... from fable figures to hair and knitting in porcelain.

Their 40 years difference in experience and career show up as contrasts in idea and form. Both the exhibitors were educated at a Danish educational institution for art, craft and design, Sten Lykke in Copenhagen (1958) and Marianne in a new design era at the Design School in Kolding/Jytland (1999). Furthermore they have both worked for the Danish ceramic industry at Royal Copenhagen: Sten 1986-2003 and Marianne 1999/2000, and for the Kähler pottery factory Sten Lykke worked in 1958 and Marianne for the Kähler industry production currently.

Sten Lykke Madsen
Sten Lykke invites us into a world of figures that reminds us of the volcanic dust from Iceland drifting over our heads, stopping the fast traffic and giving us time for contemplation of the unknown depths of the mind. www.stenlykkemadsen.com/

Marianne Nielsen
Marianne primarily works with 'unica' – a mainly thematic series of pieces without 'function'. The frame of her works are often everyday functional objects and decorative motives, that are so natural in our culture that they have become notions.www.mariannenielsen.com/

Happenstance - Exhibition April 2010

Happenstance
Neil Brownsword UK & Karen Harsbo DK
Exhibition 9 – 30 April 2010

Ceramic in layers ... about materials and the time we live in.

Happenstance
Neil Brownsword and Karen Harsbo investigate how known ceramic methods and materials are treated differently to what tradition subscribes. When the known suddenly becomes different! What happens when 'things' are done to known materials in new ways? The exhibition project developed partly in their private practice and partly in collaboration at 'Experimental Workshops'.
The title 'Happenstance' (accident, chance, fluke, twist of fate...) sums up what they do physically and still gives breadth for other interpretations.

Neil Brownsword is an artist, senior lecturer and researcher at Buckinghamshire New University. His PhD thesis (completed in 2006) combined historical and archaeological research on ceramic production in North Staffordshire from the eighteenth century to the present; the film archiving of craft skills in the industry today; and the creation of a body of artwork in response to this research. The resultant ‘narrative’ sheds light upon Britain’s contemporary “post-industrial” experience as well as its industrial past.

Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1995, Brownsword’s work has gained both national and international acclaim, and is positioned at the forefront of experimental ceramic practice in Great Britain. It resides in eminent public and private collections worldwide, such as the Victoria & Albert Museum and Crafts Council, London and Fu Le International Ceramic Art Museum, China. He continues to engage in prestigious research residencies that include the European Ceramic Work Centre, Holland; International Ceramic Research Centre, Denmark; and recently Fu Le International Ceramic Art Museum in Shaanxi, China.

For nearly a decade, Neil Brownsword’s work has been a sustained mediation on the decline of British ceramic manufacture in his home town of Stoke-on-Trent - a first hand knowledge that has accrued since he was apprenticed at the age of 16, at the Josiah Wedgwood factory. Assuming the role of artist/archaeologist, Brownsword unearths/ salvages by-products from the histories ceramic production and regenerates these symbolically charged vestiges of labour into poetic abstract amalgams. Through its metaphoric exploration of absence, fragmentation and the discarded, his work signifies the inevitable effects of global capitalism which continue to disrupt indigenous skills and a heritage economy rooted in North Staffordshire for nearly three centuries.
In 2009 he won the One Off category at the British Ceramic Biennial, and continues to exhibit both nationally and internationally. www.galeriebesson.co.uk/brownsword

Karen Harsbo is an artist and head of the Laboratory for Ceramics at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen. The Laboratory for Ceramics teaches and researches the use of ceramics in fine art. Karen Harsbo graduated from the Danish Designschool in Copenhagen. She has a wide experience in ceramic materials, she works and teaches many directions within ceramics. She has in her teaching practice emphasised an artistic approach to ceramics, historically and technically, and has run workshops for example 'The White Gold' with the Royal Copenhagen Porcelain, commission projects for murals at the Tommerup Teglvaerk, and research photo transfer for ceramics. In her own practice she exhibits and works with commission projects.

For this exhibition, her pieces have appeared from experiments with mixing and melting known ceramic materials such as glaze, plaster, porcelain. “What happen might be an accident or even a fault, but it opens up to a world of possibilities and creative potential, which could not be pre-perceived.”
Karen Harsbo: I was struck by something I heard, which I felt applied well to what I have been working on: "How knowledge travels from one material to another." Here my idea of knowledge is: knowledge and abilities embedded in the material; knowledge of how to handle and work the material; knowledge of history and culture of the material. www.kunstakademiet.dk/labs/keramik/