Light & Porcelain - Exhibition February 2011

Light & Porcelain
Margaret O'Rorke UK
Exhibition 27 January – 26 February 2011

Margaret O'Rorke from England exhibits light objects in transparent porcelain.

Margaret O'Rorke www.castlight.co.uk
”The translucency of fine high-fired porcelain captures my imagination and leads me to create thrown sculptural forms that give light. Ideas stem from the nature of the material, forms that can grow from the potter's wheel, the process of firing and a sense of adventure with light and space.

For the past 30 years I have worked as a ceramic artist in my studio. Recently I have furthermore created translucent porcelain lighting designs for industrial manufacture. Working closely with porcelain as a studio potter has given me an intimate understanding of the material and enabled me to develop an exciting approach to the concept of designing cast translucent porcelain forms that will be manufactured.”

Margaret O'Rorke was awarded a research and development grant for an industrial project at the Wade's porcelain factory in Stoke-on-Trent in 1999. Louis Poulsen Lighting A/S Copenhagen unveiled in 2002 an interesting exhibition of works by Margaret O'Rorke. In 2006 she did a collaborative commission project at the Danish Royal Copenhagen porcelain factory, a light installation for the Royal Copenhagen showroom at Amagertorv, Copenhagen.
She has made studio artist visits, workshops and industrial projects to Jingdezhen in China from 2007-2009.
In 2008 a collaboration with the Jeweler Marlene McKibbin resulted in a new collection of thrown porcelain Garment Sculptures. In 2009 she collaborated with the Finnish Art Weaver Sirkka Paikkari to create the Woven Light and Porcelain installation exhibited at Contemporary Applied Arts in London UK.

Margaret has written two books about light and porcelain:
“Clay, Light and Water' by Margaret O’Rorke, A & C Black Ltd February 2010 - AMAZON.
'Light and Porcelain' about Margaret’s pieces – design/print in China, 2010.
USA Publishers interviewed Margaret in April 2010 - see: YOUTUBE

PROCESSES AND TECHNIQUES
"The majority of my studio work is hand-thrown porcelain. When the clay is sufficiently firm, I cut and reform it. Frequently, pieces are joined when leather hard. Some hand-built work has included rolled reeds. For free-standing pieces, I may throw stoneware bases which incorporates the light fitting.
Following my industrial research projects and experiments I have made plaster-moulds from the thrown forms. Some cast forms are re-formed when leather-hard.
The pieces are fired in a gas kiln to 1300 C.
The high-fired porcelain is unglazed in order to preserve the definition and directness of the making process.
Within each piece, incorporating the lighting technology is an integral part of the creative process. Installations, including chandeliers, wall pieces and fountains, have all involved my developing complex engineering, both electrical and mechanical."

RECENT EXHIBITIONS 2007-11
2007 Victoria and Albert Museum, Flow Gallery “Collect”.
Galerie Besson “Classic and Contemporary Ceramics”.
Oxford Museum, Woodstock, “Potters of Portland”.
Flow Gallery. London. “Commissioning Exhibition”.
Jingdezhen Sanbao Ceramic Art Institute. China “International Master's exhibition”
Wison Art Museum & Jingzhe Modern Art Museum. China "World Contemporary & Public Ceramic Art"
Contemporary Applied Arts London, Showcase.
“Porcelain Garment Sculptures”. Collaboration with Marlene McKibbin
2008 KOTONA III Fiskars Finland “Garment Sculptures”
Light Sculptures, Tulessa Syntynyt
International Exhibition, Makasini, Fiskars, Finland.
Galerie Besson 'Twenty Years, Twenty Pots'.
Jingdezhen International Ceramic exhibition and workshop. Sanbao. China.
2009 Work included in McKnight Residence Artist Exhibition May.
November – December. Northern Clay Center Solo Exhibition in Gallery A, Minneapolis USA.
2010 Solo Exhibition NCECA Translucent Porcelain and Light
Woven Light and Porcelain a Collaboration
(Sirkka Paikkari is part of the exhibition Made to Cherish at Contemporary Applied Arts London).
2011 Circus Satellite to CAA 58 Marylebone High St London

RECENT ARTIST RESIDENCES AND EVENTS 2007-10
2007 International Ceramic Research Center – Denmark, Collaborative Relationships Seminar
Royal Copenhagen Porcelain.
Jingdezhen Sanbao Ceramic Art Institute China “International master's workshop.
The 2nd ICMEA Conference International Ceramic Magazine Editors Association
Fuping Pottery Art Village, Fuping, Shaanxi, China
Conference Theme Appreciation of Ceramic Art Presentation
Margaret O’Rorke Presentation Title:
Translucent Porcelain with light Studio Potter & Industrial Designer.
2008 Jingdezhen International Ceramic exhibition and workshop. Sanbao. China.
2009 Awarded Mc Knight Visiting Artist in Residence. January – March.

PUBLICATIONS AND ARTICLES
Porcelain: Caroline Whyman. Batsford.
Ceramic Technology for Potters and Sculptors: Yvonne Cuff. A & C Black 1996.
Porcelain: Jack Doherty Ceramic Handbook, A & C Black 2002.
Porcelain and Bone China: Sasha Wardell. Crowood 2004.
Naked Clay: Jane Perryman, A & C Black 2004.
Ceramics with Mixed Media: Joy Boswell, A & C Black.
Breaking the Mould: Black Dog Publications 2007.
Clay, Light and Water: by Margaret O’Rorke, A & C Black Ltd February 2010 - available on AMAZON.
USA Publishers of the book did an interview of Margaret in Philadelphia April 2010 - posted on YOUTUBE.
Light and Porcelain Booklet of Margaret’s work designed and printed in China.
Ceramic Technical May - October 2010
American Crafts June-July 2009

A Touch of ... Exhibition January 2011

A touch of...
Exhibition 6 – 22 january 2011

Salt/soda - embers - flames - ashes
Charlotte Thorup exhibits together with Ann Linnemann, Sten Lykke Madsen, Ane-Katrine von Bulow and Hans Vangsø. They show their ceramic objects, which are especially marked by their firing in gas, oil or wood fired kiln: salt/soda - embers - flames - ashes.
LINK: Charlotte Thorup - Ane-Katrine von Bülow - Ann Linnemann - Sten Lykke Madsen - Hans Vangsø

Thoughts behind the pieces - Charlotte Thorup:
”I am fascinated by patterns and repetition, dimensions and connections, and I am inspired by both nature and the city. It may be a field with the rhythm of the wheat or a building, where my attention are caught by a contrast, a new dimension. This interest appears in my ceramic work.

I enjoy working in a harmonious and simple way. It has led me to a technique where I form thin sheets of clay connecting them in various ways.
Guided by my curiousity I allow module by module to lead me towards a new form where small unities appear as one large piece.

Presently I make several objects that belong to each other and hang on a wall. Again a united whole.. created by modules. The viewer is invited to look at the piece from different angles where new balances and connections appear.

I mainly work in porcelain, because I like the inherent doubleness of this material.. between strength and fragility.
In my choice of colour I let simplicity rule, where the pieces own light and shadow effects create the 'colour'.

Finally I choose salt-glazing my ceramics, which is an ancient tradition. At high temperature salt connects with the clay and creates the glaze. This way of working is in one way unpredictable, because a salt-kiln partly 'lives its own life', and often adds the process an independent character to the pieces.”

Exhibition calendar 2011

2011 (subject to change)

6 - 22 JANUARY A touch of...
Charlotte Thorup exhibits together with Ann Linnemann, Sten Lykke Madsen, Ane-Katrine von Bulow and Hans Vangsø. They show their ceramic objects, which especially are marked by their firing in gas, oil or wood fired kilns: salt/soda - embers - flames - ashes.
LINK: Charlotte Thorup - Ane-Katrine von Bülow - Ann Linnemann - Sten Lykke Madsen - Hans Vangsø

27 JANUARY - 26 FEBRUARY Light & porcelain
Margaret O'Rorke from England exhibits unique light installations made in transparent porcelain. The translucency of fine high-fired porcelain captures her imagination and leads her to create thrown sculptural forms that give light. Ideas stem from the nature of the material, forms that can grow from the potter's wheel, the process of firing and a sense of adventure with light and space.
LINK: Margaret O'Rorke

3 - 26 MARCH In play Lis Ehrenreich & Mikael Jackson DK
The ceramic pieces by Lis Ehrenreich & Mikael Jackson DK are set 'in play' and create a new dialogue. This exhibition shows ornamental variations from the installation 'Flying Carpet', where the shadow creates an oriental carpet, to vessels containing motives of a Middle Eastern cultural heritage.

1 - 30 APRIL In the Woods - Peder Rasmussen DK
The exhibition consists of various series of figures and plates, which are made during the winter 2010-11, where Peder Rasmussen has experimented with the old Italian maiolica-technique, he first time discovered, when he in 1970 for a period of time lived in Faenza, the home-town of faïence.
LINK: Peder Rasmussen

5 - 28 MAJ Branch objects - Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl DK
What can a branch stump talk about? - Why make it in ceramics? - What wondering does it start? - And when is it even a branch stump.
LINK: Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl

1 - 25 JUNI Weight - Elisa Helland Hansen - Norway
At this exhibition Elisa Helland-Hansen invites the visitor to lift up the cups – see, touch, close the eyes and sense weight and gravity.
LINK: Elisa Helland Hansen

1 - 30 JULI Wild & vigorous - Marianne Nielsen & Marianne Krumbach DK
In July, the gallery shows a wild and vigorous Summer exhibition of new work by the emerging Danish artists Marianne Nielsen and Marianne Krumbach.
LINK: Marianne Nielsen - Marianne Krumbach

4 - 27 AUGUST Clay & drawing - Kirsten Christensen DK
Exhibition of large Italian oil-pastel drawings with ceramic object applied and framed. Small flat houses with photos of studio, women and animals, and at last a sitting skeleton. "Death at last for all of us – important is a life before death."
LINK: Kirsten Christensen

1 - 30 SEPTEMBER Extrudox A/S - Steen Ipsen & Anne Tophøj DK
“EXTRUDOX A/S is a collaboration, where we research and challenge the ceramic technique: extruding.
We have used this project as a play ground and a free space away from usual methods and projects, to discover and take in new ceramic land, challenge each other and try on own boundaries.
LINK: Steen Ipsen - Anne Tophøj

6 - 29 OCTOBER Coupling - Pipaluk Lake & Jesper Palm DK
Exhibition of glass by Pipaluk Lake and photography by Jesper Palm. For this project the artists have challenged their usual work methods. For years, each of them have collected scrap glass objects of various kinds. This collection is their starting point for the exhibition. Pipaluk Lake deforms and transforms the objects
Jesper Palm uses the given objects in still-life photo settings, where the light plays an important role.
LINK: Pipaluk Lake - Jesper Palm

3 NOV - 23 DEC STILL in love - Akio Takamori USA/J & Steen Lykke Madsen DK
LINK: Akio Takamori - Sten Lykke Madsen

1 - 23 DECEMBER Christmas exhibition - Gallery artists

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/