‘Like people, each one is different': Sculpture and ceramics exhibitions showing now
We visit exhibitions at Charleston, Yorkshire Sculpture Park and The Hepworth Wakefield
August 29, 2023
The plate is an individual to the South African artist-potter Hylton Nel. Now 200 of them, produced from the 1960s to the present day, pepper the walls of Charleston, serving stories of his life and contemporary society. Born in 1941 in Zambia, Nel now practices from home in Calitzdorp in the Western Cape region of South Africa. And whilst some of his works have been crafted in response to the house, and the Bloomsbury Group artists who made it their home, most connect with its history more coincidentally.
Nel plays with his medium with the whimsy of David Shrigley. Some plates simply detail the meals he’s had to eat - ‘pickled tongue of beef and coarsly [sic] mashed potatoes. Quite nice.’ Others show biblical scenes. A thin glaze of contemporary politics covers them all: ‘Though the church cannot bless it has always buggered’.
Like Very Private?, Charleston’s previous exhibition of Duncan Grant’s erotic drawings, it’s explicit. Expect sex, cocks, and naked sculptures (in the books of the museum shop). One series references Francis Bacon, perhaps a nod to the artist’s own time spent in London.
Nel’s relationship with his sexuality is equally ambiguous; in one interview, he speaks of queerness as a ‘handicap of one’s development’. These complexities, however, remain relegated to the books, and Bloomberg Connects captions outside the exhibition.
This plate is what I have to say celebrates the artist’s experimental and playful artistic process. He challenges his form, altering the borders of the plates. Some mimic wood grain in their decoration. Others will never be seen; destruction is an equally important part of his practice.
Nel is best known for his ceramic plates, and though he distinguishes between his practices, he is a multidisciplinary artist, working in writing, painting, and sculpture. Like Betty Woodman, currently on show in the galleries opposite, his sculptural works are more ambitious in subject and style, and increasingly with age, but here we only catch glimpses of them in the texts outside the gallery walls.
Bruce McClean’s ‘Jug’ (1986) has something of Betty about it too, with its angular form, and figurative, facial, design. It sits at the start of the Hepworth Wakefield’s new display, The Art of the Potter, which connects the oft-separated histories of ceramicists and sculptors - in part, a response to two historic exhibitions.
It lent its title too an exhibition held at The Wakefield Art Gallery in 1959. But, earlier still, it draws from a Seven and Five Society exhibition at London’s Zwemmer Gallery in 1935, which included abstract sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, paintings by Ben Nicholson, and pottery by William Staite Murray.
Staite Murray had also previously exhibited works with Winifred Nicholson’s paintings and sculptures by Henry Moore. ‘If Mr Murray’s pots aspire to the condition of sculpture, the new works by young British artists… aspire to the condition of pottery,’ wrote one reviewer, highlighting the interplay between both forms. It’s directly reflected in the Hepworth’s approach; Ben Nicholson’s painting ‘1933 (Piquet)’ sits comfortably above Henry Moore’s ‘Head of a Woman’, two dark works crafted seven years apart.
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Though grounded in post-war British studio pottery, The Art of the Potter extends into its legacies in global contemporary art. In the room’s centre, an enormous multi-level plinth displays 23 works by fifteen potters, including some particularly large vessels; but the most intriguing works can be found in the corners. Ryoji Koie’s ‘Chernobyl’ makes radical use of clay, rethinking the domestic ware as a medium for responding to historical events. Others, like Akiko Hirai, combine plural influences; one work adopts the shape of the Korean moon jar, a Japanese raku-like finish, and the name of an Italian writer.
The large, round pots of Magdalene Odundo – well-represented of late in London and Cambridge – speak to connections between British and African artists. During her residency at Abuja Pottery, Odundo met Michael Cardew, the Senior Pottery Officer for the Nigerian British colonial government, who had trained under the infamous Bernard Leach (other attendees included legends like Ladi Kwali and Lami Toto). Odundo, a member of the Nigeria Gwari ethnic group, adapted their traditional, women-led, pull method of pot-building for use in increasingly abstract forms. Her ‘hybrid pots’, many too heavy for purpose, again challenge the (gendered) reduction of ceramics to the ‘domestic’ sphere.
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Wakefield was the first UK public collection to acquire Odundo’s works, as part of its progressive ‘Education Resource Service’ that purchased ceramics for children’s art education in the 1970s. And the Hepworth – with its eponymous exhibition, and annual ceramics fair – continues that legacy, curating clay with great stature.
There are more Hepworths to find – and ceramics to buy - at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There, Takahashi McGil – the collaborative name for artists Kaori Takahashi and Mark McGilvray – present a range of urushi bowls and ornaments. Combining traditional Japanese wood lacquer, with Western techniques, the vessels embrace imperfections in form. The most striking of the black bowls feature significant cracks.
As married artists, their relationship is personal as well as creative; he works in shape and form, she carves and lacquers. Whilst displayed across the world, including in Tokyo, their domestic wares are also products of domesticity and, with their honeycomb patterns and chopstick rests filled with twigs, sculptural connections between interior and exterior environments.
Hylton Nel: This plate is what I have to say is on view at Charleston, Lewes until 10 September 2023.
The Art of the Potter: Ceramics and Sculpture from 1930 to Now is on view at The Hepworth Wakefield until January 2024.
Takahashi McGil and Emma Lawrenson: Balance and Form is on view at Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 22 October 2023.
Charleston image credits: Marc Barben, Michael Stevenson.
The plate is an individual to the South African artist-potter Hylton Nel. Now 200 of them, produced from the 1960s to the present day, pepper the walls of Charleston, serving stories of his life and contemporary society. Born in 1941 in Zambia, Nel now practices from home in Calitzdorp in the Western Cape region of South Africa. And whilst some of his works have been crafted in response to the house, and the Bloomsbury Group artists who made it their home, most connect with its history more coincidentally.
Nel plays with his medium with the whimsy of David Shrigley. Some plates simply detail the meals he’s had to eat - ‘pickled tongue of beef and coarsly [sic] mashed potatoes. Quite nice.’ Others show biblical scenes. A thin glaze of contemporary politics covers them all: ‘Though the church cannot bless it has always buggered’.
Like Very Private?, Charleston’s previous exhibition of Duncan Grant’s erotic drawings, it’s explicit. Expect sex, cocks, and naked sculptures (in the books of the museum shop). One series references Francis Bacon, perhaps a nod to the artist’s own time spent in London.
Nel’s relationship with his sexuality is equally ambiguous; in one interview, he speaks of queerness as a ‘handicap of one’s development’. These complexities, however, remain relegated to the books, and Bloomberg Connects captions outside the exhibition.
This plate is what I have to say celebrates the artist’s experimental and playful artistic process. He challenges his form, altering the borders of the plates. Some mimic wood grain in their decoration. Others will never be seen; destruction is an equally important part of his practice.
Nel is best known for his ceramic plates, and though he distinguishes between his practices, he is a multidisciplinary artist, working in writing, painting, and sculpture. Like Betty Woodman, currently on show in the galleries opposite, his sculptural works are more ambitious in subject and style, and increasingly with age, but here we only catch glimpses of them in the texts outside the gallery walls.
Bruce McClean’s ‘Jug’ (1986) has something of Betty about it too, with its angular form, and figurative, facial, design. It sits at the start of the Hepworth Wakefield’s new display, The Art of the Potter, which connects the oft-separated histories of ceramicists and sculptors - in part, a response to two historic exhibitions.
It lent its title too an exhibition held at The Wakefield Art Gallery in 1959. But, earlier still, it draws from a Seven and Five Society exhibition at London’s Zwemmer Gallery in 1935, which included abstract sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, paintings by Ben Nicholson, and pottery by William Staite Murray.
Staite Murray had also previously exhibited works with Winifred Nicholson’s paintings and sculptures by Henry Moore. ‘If Mr Murray’s pots aspire to the condition of sculpture, the new works by young British artists… aspire to the condition of pottery,’ wrote one reviewer, highlighting the interplay between both forms. It’s directly reflected in the Hepworth’s approach; Ben Nicholson’s painting ‘1933 (Piquet)’ sits comfortably above Henry Moore’s ‘Head of a Woman’, two dark works crafted seven years apart.
Though grounded in post-war British studio pottery, The Art of the Potter extends into its legacies in global contemporary art. In the room’s centre, an enormous multi-level plinth displays 23 works by fifteen potters, including some particularly large vessels; but the most intriguing works can be found in the corners. Ryoji Koie’s ‘Chernobyl’ makes radical use of clay, rethinking the domestic ware as a medium for responding to historical events. Others, like Akiko Hirai, combine plural influences; one work adopts the shape of the Korean moon jar, a Japanese raku-like finish, and the name of an Italian writer.
The large, round pots of Magdalene Odundo – well-represented of late in London and Cambridge – speak to connections between British and African artists. During her residency at Abuja Pottery, Odundo met Michael Cardew, the Senior Pottery Officer for the Nigerian British colonial government, who had trained under the infamous Bernard Leach (other attendees included legends like Ladi Kwali and Lami Toto). Odundo, a member of the Nigeria Gwari ethnic group, adapted their traditional, women-led, pull method of pot-building for use in increasingly abstract forms. Her ‘hybrid pots’, many too heavy for purpose, again challenge the (gendered) reduction of ceramics to the ‘domestic’ sphere.
Wakefield was the first UK public collection to acquire Odundo’s works, as part of its progressive ‘Education Resource Service’ that purchased ceramics for children’s art education in the 1970s. And the Hepworth – with its eponymous exhibition, and annual ceramics fair – continues that legacy, curating clay with great stature.
There are more Hepworths to find – and ceramics to buy - at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There, Takahashi McGil – the collaborative name for artists Kaori Takahashi and Mark McGilvray – present a range of urushi bowls and ornaments. Combining traditional Japanese wood lacquer, with Western techniques, the vessels embrace imperfections in form. The most striking of the black bowls feature significant cracks.
As married artists, their relationship is personal as well as creative; he works in shape and form, she carves and lacquers. Whilst displayed across the world, including in Tokyo, their domestic wares are also products of domesticity and, with their honeycomb patterns and chopstick rests filled with twigs, sculptural connections between interior and exterior environments.
Hylton Nel: This plate is what I have to say is on view at Charleston, Lewes until 10 September 2023.
The Art of the Potter: Ceramics and Sculpture from 1930 to Now is on view at The Hepworth Wakefield until January 2024.
Takahashi McGil and Emma Lawrenson: Balance and Form is on view at Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 22 October 2023.
Charleston image credits: Marc Barben, Michael Stevenson.
The plate is an individual to the South African artist-potter Hylton Nel. Now 200 of them, produced from the 1960s to the present day, pepper the walls of Charleston, serving stories of his life and contemporary society. Born in 1941 in Zambia, Nel now practices from home in Calitzdorp in the Western Cape region of South Africa. And whilst some of his works have been crafted in response to the house, and the Bloomsbury Group artists who made it their home, most connect with its history more coincidentally.
Nel plays with his medium with the whimsy of David Shrigley. Some plates simply detail the meals he’s had to eat - ‘pickled tongue of beef and coarsly [sic] mashed potatoes. Quite nice.’ Others show biblical scenes. A thin glaze of contemporary politics covers them all: ‘Though the church cannot bless it has always buggered’.
Like Very Private?, Charleston’s previous exhibition of Duncan Grant’s erotic drawings, it’s explicit. Expect sex, cocks, and naked sculptures (in the books of the museum shop). One series references Francis Bacon, perhaps a nod to the artist’s own time spent in London.
Nel’s relationship with his sexuality is equally ambiguous; in one interview, he speaks of queerness as a ‘handicap of one’s development’. These complexities, however, remain relegated to the books, and Bloomberg Connects captions outside the exhibition.
This plate is what I have to say celebrates the artist’s experimental and playful artistic process. He challenges his form, altering the borders of the plates. Some mimic wood grain in their decoration. Others will never be seen; destruction is an equally important part of his practice.
Nel is best known for his ceramic plates, and though he distinguishes between his practices, he is a multidisciplinary artist, working in writing, painting, and sculpture. Like Betty Woodman, currently on show in the galleries opposite, his sculptural works are more ambitious in subject and style, and increasingly with age, but here we only catch glimpses of them in the texts outside the gallery walls.
Bruce McClean’s ‘Jug’ (1986) has something of Betty about it too, with its angular form, and figurative, facial, design. It sits at the start of the Hepworth Wakefield’s new display, The Art of the Potter, which connects the oft-separated histories of ceramicists and sculptors - in part, a response to two historic exhibitions.
It lent its title too an exhibition held at The Wakefield Art Gallery in 1959. But, earlier still, it draws from a Seven and Five Society exhibition at London’s Zwemmer Gallery in 1935, which included abstract sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, paintings by Ben Nicholson, and pottery by William Staite Murray.
Staite Murray had also previously exhibited works with Winifred Nicholson’s paintings and sculptures by Henry Moore. ‘If Mr Murray’s pots aspire to the condition of sculpture, the new works by young British artists… aspire to the condition of pottery,’ wrote one reviewer, highlighting the interplay between both forms. It’s directly reflected in the Hepworth’s approach; Ben Nicholson’s painting ‘1933 (Piquet)’ sits comfortably above Henry Moore’s ‘Head of a Woman’, two dark works crafted seven years apart.
Though grounded in post-war British studio pottery, The Art of the Potter extends into its legacies in global contemporary art. In the room’s centre, an enormous multi-level plinth displays 23 works by fifteen potters, including some particularly large vessels; but the most intriguing works can be found in the corners. Ryoji Koie’s ‘Chernobyl’ makes radical use of clay, rethinking the domestic ware as a medium for responding to historical events. Others, like Akiko Hirai, combine plural influences; one work adopts the shape of the Korean moon jar, a Japanese raku-like finish, and the name of an Italian writer.
The large, round pots of Magdalene Odundo – well-represented of late in London and Cambridge – speak to connections between British and African artists. During her residency at Abuja Pottery, Odundo met Michael Cardew, the Senior Pottery Officer for the Nigerian British colonial government, who had trained under the infamous Bernard Leach (other attendees included legends like Ladi Kwali and Lami Toto). Odundo, a member of the Nigeria Gwari ethnic group, adapted their traditional, women-led, pull method of pot-building for use in increasingly abstract forms. Her ‘hybrid pots’, many too heavy for purpose, again challenge the (gendered) reduction of ceramics to the ‘domestic’ sphere.
Wakefield was the first UK public collection to acquire Odundo’s works, as part of its progressive ‘Education Resource Service’ that purchased ceramics for children’s art education in the 1970s. And the Hepworth – with its eponymous exhibition, and annual ceramics fair – continues that legacy, curating clay with great stature.
There are more Hepworths to find – and ceramics to buy - at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There, Takahashi McGil – the collaborative name for artists Kaori Takahashi and Mark McGilvray – present a range of urushi bowls and ornaments. Combining traditional Japanese wood lacquer, with Western techniques, the vessels embrace imperfections in form. The most striking of the black bowls feature significant cracks.
As married artists, their relationship is personal as well as creative; he works in shape and form, she carves and lacquers. Whilst displayed across the world, including in Tokyo, their domestic wares are also products of domesticity and, with their honeycomb patterns and chopstick rests filled with twigs, sculptural connections between interior and exterior environments.
Hylton Nel: This plate is what I have to say is on view at Charleston, Lewes until 10 September 2023.
The Art of the Potter: Ceramics and Sculpture from 1930 to Now is on view at The Hepworth Wakefield until January 2024.
Takahashi McGil and Emma Lawrenson: Balance and Form is on view at Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 22 October 2023.
Charleston image credits: Marc Barben, Michael Stevenson.
The plate is an individual to the South African artist-potter Hylton Nel. Now 200 of them, produced from the 1960s to the present day, pepper the walls of Charleston, serving stories of his life and contemporary society. Born in 1941 in Zambia, Nel now practices from home in Calitzdorp in the Western Cape region of South Africa. And whilst some of his works have been crafted in response to the house, and the Bloomsbury Group artists who made it their home, most connect with its history more coincidentally.
Nel plays with his medium with the whimsy of David Shrigley. Some plates simply detail the meals he’s had to eat - ‘pickled tongue of beef and coarsly [sic] mashed potatoes. Quite nice.’ Others show biblical scenes. A thin glaze of contemporary politics covers them all: ‘Though the church cannot bless it has always buggered’.
Like Very Private?, Charleston’s previous exhibition of Duncan Grant’s erotic drawings, it’s explicit. Expect sex, cocks, and naked sculptures (in the books of the museum shop). One series references Francis Bacon, perhaps a nod to the artist’s own time spent in London.
Nel’s relationship with his sexuality is equally ambiguous; in one interview, he speaks of queerness as a ‘handicap of one’s development’. These complexities, however, remain relegated to the books, and Bloomberg Connects captions outside the exhibition.
This plate is what I have to say celebrates the artist’s experimental and playful artistic process. He challenges his form, altering the borders of the plates. Some mimic wood grain in their decoration. Others will never be seen; destruction is an equally important part of his practice.
Nel is best known for his ceramic plates, and though he distinguishes between his practices, he is a multidisciplinary artist, working in writing, painting, and sculpture. Like Betty Woodman, currently on show in the galleries opposite, his sculptural works are more ambitious in subject and style, and increasingly with age, but here we only catch glimpses of them in the texts outside the gallery walls.
Bruce McClean’s ‘Jug’ (1986) has something of Betty about it too, with its angular form, and figurative, facial, design. It sits at the start of the Hepworth Wakefield’s new display, The Art of the Potter, which connects the oft-separated histories of ceramicists and sculptors - in part, a response to two historic exhibitions.
It lent its title too an exhibition held at The Wakefield Art Gallery in 1959. But, earlier still, it draws from a Seven and Five Society exhibition at London’s Zwemmer Gallery in 1935, which included abstract sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, paintings by Ben Nicholson, and pottery by William Staite Murray.
Staite Murray had also previously exhibited works with Winifred Nicholson’s paintings and sculptures by Henry Moore. ‘If Mr Murray’s pots aspire to the condition of sculpture, the new works by young British artists… aspire to the condition of pottery,’ wrote one reviewer, highlighting the interplay between both forms. It’s directly reflected in the Hepworth’s approach; Ben Nicholson’s painting ‘1933 (Piquet)’ sits comfortably above Henry Moore’s ‘Head of a Woman’, two dark works crafted seven years apart.
Though grounded in post-war British studio pottery, The Art of the Potter extends into its legacies in global contemporary art. In the room’s centre, an enormous multi-level plinth displays 23 works by fifteen potters, including some particularly large vessels; but the most intriguing works can be found in the corners. Ryoji Koie’s ‘Chernobyl’ makes radical use of clay, rethinking the domestic ware as a medium for responding to historical events. Others, like Akiko Hirai, combine plural influences; one work adopts the shape of the Korean moon jar, a Japanese raku-like finish, and the name of an Italian writer.
The large, round pots of Magdalene Odundo – well-represented of late in London and Cambridge – speak to connections between British and African artists. During her residency at Abuja Pottery, Odundo met Michael Cardew, the Senior Pottery Officer for the Nigerian British colonial government, who had trained under the infamous Bernard Leach (other attendees included legends like Ladi Kwali and Lami Toto). Odundo, a member of the Nigeria Gwari ethnic group, adapted their traditional, women-led, pull method of pot-building for use in increasingly abstract forms. Her ‘hybrid pots’, many too heavy for purpose, again challenge the (gendered) reduction of ceramics to the ‘domestic’ sphere.
Wakefield was the first UK public collection to acquire Odundo’s works, as part of its progressive ‘Education Resource Service’ that purchased ceramics for children’s art education in the 1970s. And the Hepworth – with its eponymous exhibition, and annual ceramics fair – continues that legacy, curating clay with great stature.
There are more Hepworths to find – and ceramics to buy - at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There, Takahashi McGil – the collaborative name for artists Kaori Takahashi and Mark McGilvray – present a range of urushi bowls and ornaments. Combining traditional Japanese wood lacquer, with Western techniques, the vessels embrace imperfections in form. The most striking of the black bowls feature significant cracks.
As married artists, their relationship is personal as well as creative; he works in shape and form, she carves and lacquers. Whilst displayed across the world, including in Tokyo, their domestic wares are also products of domesticity and, with their honeycomb patterns and chopstick rests filled with twigs, sculptural connections between interior and exterior environments.
Hylton Nel: This plate is what I have to say is on view at Charleston, Lewes until 10 September 2023.
The Art of the Potter: Ceramics and Sculpture from 1930 to Now is on view at The Hepworth Wakefield until January 2024.
Takahashi McGil and Emma Lawrenson: Balance and Form is on view at Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 22 October 2023.
Charleston image credits: Marc Barben, Michael Stevenson.
The plate is an individual to the South African artist-potter Hylton Nel. Now 200 of them, produced from the 1960s to the present day, pepper the walls of Charleston, serving stories of his life and contemporary society. Born in 1941 in Zambia, Nel now practices from home in Calitzdorp in the Western Cape region of South Africa. And whilst some of his works have been crafted in response to the house, and the Bloomsbury Group artists who made it their home, most connect with its history more coincidentally.
Nel plays with his medium with the whimsy of David Shrigley. Some plates simply detail the meals he’s had to eat - ‘pickled tongue of beef and coarsly [sic] mashed potatoes. Quite nice.’ Others show biblical scenes. A thin glaze of contemporary politics covers them all: ‘Though the church cannot bless it has always buggered’.
Like Very Private?, Charleston’s previous exhibition of Duncan Grant’s erotic drawings, it’s explicit. Expect sex, cocks, and naked sculptures (in the books of the museum shop). One series references Francis Bacon, perhaps a nod to the artist’s own time spent in London.
Nel’s relationship with his sexuality is equally ambiguous; in one interview, he speaks of queerness as a ‘handicap of one’s development’. These complexities, however, remain relegated to the books, and Bloomberg Connects captions outside the exhibition.
This plate is what I have to say celebrates the artist’s experimental and playful artistic process. He challenges his form, altering the borders of the plates. Some mimic wood grain in their decoration. Others will never be seen; destruction is an equally important part of his practice.
Nel is best known for his ceramic plates, and though he distinguishes between his practices, he is a multidisciplinary artist, working in writing, painting, and sculpture. Like Betty Woodman, currently on show in the galleries opposite, his sculptural works are more ambitious in subject and style, and increasingly with age, but here we only catch glimpses of them in the texts outside the gallery walls.
Bruce McClean’s ‘Jug’ (1986) has something of Betty about it too, with its angular form, and figurative, facial, design. It sits at the start of the Hepworth Wakefield’s new display, The Art of the Potter, which connects the oft-separated histories of ceramicists and sculptors - in part, a response to two historic exhibitions.
It lent its title too an exhibition held at The Wakefield Art Gallery in 1959. But, earlier still, it draws from a Seven and Five Society exhibition at London’s Zwemmer Gallery in 1935, which included abstract sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, paintings by Ben Nicholson, and pottery by William Staite Murray.
Staite Murray had also previously exhibited works with Winifred Nicholson’s paintings and sculptures by Henry Moore. ‘If Mr Murray’s pots aspire to the condition of sculpture, the new works by young British artists… aspire to the condition of pottery,’ wrote one reviewer, highlighting the interplay between both forms. It’s directly reflected in the Hepworth’s approach; Ben Nicholson’s painting ‘1933 (Piquet)’ sits comfortably above Henry Moore’s ‘Head of a Woman’, two dark works crafted seven years apart.
Though grounded in post-war British studio pottery, The Art of the Potter extends into its legacies in global contemporary art. In the room’s centre, an enormous multi-level plinth displays 23 works by fifteen potters, including some particularly large vessels; but the most intriguing works can be found in the corners. Ryoji Koie’s ‘Chernobyl’ makes radical use of clay, rethinking the domestic ware as a medium for responding to historical events. Others, like Akiko Hirai, combine plural influences; one work adopts the shape of the Korean moon jar, a Japanese raku-like finish, and the name of an Italian writer.
The large, round pots of Magdalene Odundo – well-represented of late in London and Cambridge – speak to connections between British and African artists. During her residency at Abuja Pottery, Odundo met Michael Cardew, the Senior Pottery Officer for the Nigerian British colonial government, who had trained under the infamous Bernard Leach (other attendees included legends like Ladi Kwali and Lami Toto). Odundo, a member of the Nigeria Gwari ethnic group, adapted their traditional, women-led, pull method of pot-building for use in increasingly abstract forms. Her ‘hybrid pots’, many too heavy for purpose, again challenge the (gendered) reduction of ceramics to the ‘domestic’ sphere.
Wakefield was the first UK public collection to acquire Odundo’s works, as part of its progressive ‘Education Resource Service’ that purchased ceramics for children’s art education in the 1970s. And the Hepworth – with its eponymous exhibition, and annual ceramics fair – continues that legacy, curating clay with great stature.
There are more Hepworths to find – and ceramics to buy - at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There, Takahashi McGil – the collaborative name for artists Kaori Takahashi and Mark McGilvray – present a range of urushi bowls and ornaments. Combining traditional Japanese wood lacquer, with Western techniques, the vessels embrace imperfections in form. The most striking of the black bowls feature significant cracks.
As married artists, their relationship is personal as well as creative; he works in shape and form, she carves and lacquers. Whilst displayed across the world, including in Tokyo, their domestic wares are also products of domesticity and, with their honeycomb patterns and chopstick rests filled with twigs, sculptural connections between interior and exterior environments.
Hylton Nel: This plate is what I have to say is on view at Charleston, Lewes until 10 September 2023.
The Art of the Potter: Ceramics and Sculpture from 1930 to Now is on view at The Hepworth Wakefield until January 2024.
Takahashi McGil and Emma Lawrenson: Balance and Form is on view at Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 22 October 2023.
Charleston image credits: Marc Barben, Michael Stevenson.
The plate is an individual to the South African artist-potter Hylton Nel. Now 200 of them, produced from the 1960s to the present day, pepper the walls of Charleston, serving stories of his life and contemporary society. Born in 1941 in Zambia, Nel now practices from home in Calitzdorp in the Western Cape region of South Africa. And whilst some of his works have been crafted in response to the house, and the Bloomsbury Group artists who made it their home, most connect with its history more coincidentally.
Nel plays with his medium with the whimsy of David Shrigley. Some plates simply detail the meals he’s had to eat - ‘pickled tongue of beef and coarsly [sic] mashed potatoes. Quite nice.’ Others show biblical scenes. A thin glaze of contemporary politics covers them all: ‘Though the church cannot bless it has always buggered’.
Like Very Private?, Charleston’s previous exhibition of Duncan Grant’s erotic drawings, it’s explicit. Expect sex, cocks, and naked sculptures (in the books of the museum shop). One series references Francis Bacon, perhaps a nod to the artist’s own time spent in London.
Nel’s relationship with his sexuality is equally ambiguous; in one interview, he speaks of queerness as a ‘handicap of one’s development’. These complexities, however, remain relegated to the books, and Bloomberg Connects captions outside the exhibition.
This plate is what I have to say celebrates the artist’s experimental and playful artistic process. He challenges his form, altering the borders of the plates. Some mimic wood grain in their decoration. Others will never be seen; destruction is an equally important part of his practice.
Nel is best known for his ceramic plates, and though he distinguishes between his practices, he is a multidisciplinary artist, working in writing, painting, and sculpture. Like Betty Woodman, currently on show in the galleries opposite, his sculptural works are more ambitious in subject and style, and increasingly with age, but here we only catch glimpses of them in the texts outside the gallery walls.
Bruce McClean’s ‘Jug’ (1986) has something of Betty about it too, with its angular form, and figurative, facial, design. It sits at the start of the Hepworth Wakefield’s new display, The Art of the Potter, which connects the oft-separated histories of ceramicists and sculptors - in part, a response to two historic exhibitions.
It lent its title too an exhibition held at The Wakefield Art Gallery in 1959. But, earlier still, it draws from a Seven and Five Society exhibition at London’s Zwemmer Gallery in 1935, which included abstract sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, paintings by Ben Nicholson, and pottery by William Staite Murray.
Staite Murray had also previously exhibited works with Winifred Nicholson’s paintings and sculptures by Henry Moore. ‘If Mr Murray’s pots aspire to the condition of sculpture, the new works by young British artists… aspire to the condition of pottery,’ wrote one reviewer, highlighting the interplay between both forms. It’s directly reflected in the Hepworth’s approach; Ben Nicholson’s painting ‘1933 (Piquet)’ sits comfortably above Henry Moore’s ‘Head of a Woman’, two dark works crafted seven years apart.
Though grounded in post-war British studio pottery, The Art of the Potter extends into its legacies in global contemporary art. In the room’s centre, an enormous multi-level plinth displays 23 works by fifteen potters, including some particularly large vessels; but the most intriguing works can be found in the corners. Ryoji Koie’s ‘Chernobyl’ makes radical use of clay, rethinking the domestic ware as a medium for responding to historical events. Others, like Akiko Hirai, combine plural influences; one work adopts the shape of the Korean moon jar, a Japanese raku-like finish, and the name of an Italian writer.
The large, round pots of Magdalene Odundo – well-represented of late in London and Cambridge – speak to connections between British and African artists. During her residency at Abuja Pottery, Odundo met Michael Cardew, the Senior Pottery Officer for the Nigerian British colonial government, who had trained under the infamous Bernard Leach (other attendees included legends like Ladi Kwali and Lami Toto). Odundo, a member of the Nigeria Gwari ethnic group, adapted their traditional, women-led, pull method of pot-building for use in increasingly abstract forms. Her ‘hybrid pots’, many too heavy for purpose, again challenge the (gendered) reduction of ceramics to the ‘domestic’ sphere.
Wakefield was the first UK public collection to acquire Odundo’s works, as part of its progressive ‘Education Resource Service’ that purchased ceramics for children’s art education in the 1970s. And the Hepworth – with its eponymous exhibition, and annual ceramics fair – continues that legacy, curating clay with great stature.
There are more Hepworths to find – and ceramics to buy - at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There, Takahashi McGil – the collaborative name for artists Kaori Takahashi and Mark McGilvray – present a range of urushi bowls and ornaments. Combining traditional Japanese wood lacquer, with Western techniques, the vessels embrace imperfections in form. The most striking of the black bowls feature significant cracks.
As married artists, their relationship is personal as well as creative; he works in shape and form, she carves and lacquers. Whilst displayed across the world, including in Tokyo, their domestic wares are also products of domesticity and, with their honeycomb patterns and chopstick rests filled with twigs, sculptural connections between interior and exterior environments.
Hylton Nel: This plate is what I have to say is on view at Charleston, Lewes until 10 September 2023.
The Art of the Potter: Ceramics and Sculpture from 1930 to Now is on view at The Hepworth Wakefield until January 2024.
Takahashi McGil and Emma Lawrenson: Balance and Form is on view at Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 22 October 2023.
Charleston image credits: Marc Barben, Michael Stevenson.
The plate is an individual to the South African artist-potter Hylton Nel. Now 200 of them, produced from the 1960s to the present day, pepper the walls of Charleston, serving stories of his life and contemporary society. Born in 1941 in Zambia, Nel now practices from home in Calitzdorp in the Western Cape region of South Africa. And whilst some of his works have been crafted in response to the house, and the Bloomsbury Group artists who made it their home, most connect with its history more coincidentally.
Nel plays with his medium with the whimsy of David Shrigley. Some plates simply detail the meals he’s had to eat - ‘pickled tongue of beef and coarsly [sic] mashed potatoes. Quite nice.’ Others show biblical scenes. A thin glaze of contemporary politics covers them all: ‘Though the church cannot bless it has always buggered’.
Like Very Private?, Charleston’s previous exhibition of Duncan Grant’s erotic drawings, it’s explicit. Expect sex, cocks, and naked sculptures (in the books of the museum shop). One series references Francis Bacon, perhaps a nod to the artist’s own time spent in London.
Nel’s relationship with his sexuality is equally ambiguous; in one interview, he speaks of queerness as a ‘handicap of one’s development’. These complexities, however, remain relegated to the books, and Bloomberg Connects captions outside the exhibition.
This plate is what I have to say celebrates the artist’s experimental and playful artistic process. He challenges his form, altering the borders of the plates. Some mimic wood grain in their decoration. Others will never be seen; destruction is an equally important part of his practice.
Nel is best known for his ceramic plates, and though he distinguishes between his practices, he is a multidisciplinary artist, working in writing, painting, and sculpture. Like Betty Woodman, currently on show in the galleries opposite, his sculptural works are more ambitious in subject and style, and increasingly with age, but here we only catch glimpses of them in the texts outside the gallery walls.
Bruce McClean’s ‘Jug’ (1986) has something of Betty about it too, with its angular form, and figurative, facial, design. It sits at the start of the Hepworth Wakefield’s new display, The Art of the Potter, which connects the oft-separated histories of ceramicists and sculptors - in part, a response to two historic exhibitions.
It lent its title too an exhibition held at The Wakefield Art Gallery in 1959. But, earlier still, it draws from a Seven and Five Society exhibition at London’s Zwemmer Gallery in 1935, which included abstract sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, paintings by Ben Nicholson, and pottery by William Staite Murray.
Staite Murray had also previously exhibited works with Winifred Nicholson’s paintings and sculptures by Henry Moore. ‘If Mr Murray’s pots aspire to the condition of sculpture, the new works by young British artists… aspire to the condition of pottery,’ wrote one reviewer, highlighting the interplay between both forms. It’s directly reflected in the Hepworth’s approach; Ben Nicholson’s painting ‘1933 (Piquet)’ sits comfortably above Henry Moore’s ‘Head of a Woman’, two dark works crafted seven years apart.
Though grounded in post-war British studio pottery, The Art of the Potter extends into its legacies in global contemporary art. In the room’s centre, an enormous multi-level plinth displays 23 works by fifteen potters, including some particularly large vessels; but the most intriguing works can be found in the corners. Ryoji Koie’s ‘Chernobyl’ makes radical use of clay, rethinking the domestic ware as a medium for responding to historical events. Others, like Akiko Hirai, combine plural influences; one work adopts the shape of the Korean moon jar, a Japanese raku-like finish, and the name of an Italian writer.
The large, round pots of Magdalene Odundo – well-represented of late in London and Cambridge – speak to connections between British and African artists. During her residency at Abuja Pottery, Odundo met Michael Cardew, the Senior Pottery Officer for the Nigerian British colonial government, who had trained under the infamous Bernard Leach (other attendees included legends like Ladi Kwali and Lami Toto). Odundo, a member of the Nigeria Gwari ethnic group, adapted their traditional, women-led, pull method of pot-building for use in increasingly abstract forms. Her ‘hybrid pots’, many too heavy for purpose, again challenge the (gendered) reduction of ceramics to the ‘domestic’ sphere.
Wakefield was the first UK public collection to acquire Odundo’s works, as part of its progressive ‘Education Resource Service’ that purchased ceramics for children’s art education in the 1970s. And the Hepworth – with its eponymous exhibition, and annual ceramics fair – continues that legacy, curating clay with great stature.
There are more Hepworths to find – and ceramics to buy - at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There, Takahashi McGil – the collaborative name for artists Kaori Takahashi and Mark McGilvray – present a range of urushi bowls and ornaments. Combining traditional Japanese wood lacquer, with Western techniques, the vessels embrace imperfections in form. The most striking of the black bowls feature significant cracks.
As married artists, their relationship is personal as well as creative; he works in shape and form, she carves and lacquers. Whilst displayed across the world, including in Tokyo, their domestic wares are also products of domesticity and, with their honeycomb patterns and chopstick rests filled with twigs, sculptural connections between interior and exterior environments.
Hylton Nel: This plate is what I have to say is on view at Charleston, Lewes until 10 September 2023.
The Art of the Potter: Ceramics and Sculpture from 1930 to Now is on view at The Hepworth Wakefield until January 2024.
Takahashi McGil and Emma Lawrenson: Balance and Form is on view at Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 22 October 2023.
Charleston image credits: Marc Barben, Michael Stevenson.
The plate is an individual to the South African artist-potter Hylton Nel. Now 200 of them, produced from the 1960s to the present day, pepper the walls of Charleston, serving stories of his life and contemporary society. Born in 1941 in Zambia, Nel now practices from home in Calitzdorp in the Western Cape region of South Africa. And whilst some of his works have been crafted in response to the house, and the Bloomsbury Group artists who made it their home, most connect with its history more coincidentally.
Nel plays with his medium with the whimsy of David Shrigley. Some plates simply detail the meals he’s had to eat - ‘pickled tongue of beef and coarsly [sic] mashed potatoes. Quite nice.’ Others show biblical scenes. A thin glaze of contemporary politics covers them all: ‘Though the church cannot bless it has always buggered’.
Like Very Private?, Charleston’s previous exhibition of Duncan Grant’s erotic drawings, it’s explicit. Expect sex, cocks, and naked sculptures (in the books of the museum shop). One series references Francis Bacon, perhaps a nod to the artist’s own time spent in London.
Nel’s relationship with his sexuality is equally ambiguous; in one interview, he speaks of queerness as a ‘handicap of one’s development’. These complexities, however, remain relegated to the books, and Bloomberg Connects captions outside the exhibition.
This plate is what I have to say celebrates the artist’s experimental and playful artistic process. He challenges his form, altering the borders of the plates. Some mimic wood grain in their decoration. Others will never be seen; destruction is an equally important part of his practice.
Nel is best known for his ceramic plates, and though he distinguishes between his practices, he is a multidisciplinary artist, working in writing, painting, and sculpture. Like Betty Woodman, currently on show in the galleries opposite, his sculptural works are more ambitious in subject and style, and increasingly with age, but here we only catch glimpses of them in the texts outside the gallery walls.
Bruce McClean’s ‘Jug’ (1986) has something of Betty about it too, with its angular form, and figurative, facial, design. It sits at the start of the Hepworth Wakefield’s new display, The Art of the Potter, which connects the oft-separated histories of ceramicists and sculptors - in part, a response to two historic exhibitions.
It lent its title too an exhibition held at The Wakefield Art Gallery in 1959. But, earlier still, it draws from a Seven and Five Society exhibition at London’s Zwemmer Gallery in 1935, which included abstract sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, paintings by Ben Nicholson, and pottery by William Staite Murray.
Staite Murray had also previously exhibited works with Winifred Nicholson’s paintings and sculptures by Henry Moore. ‘If Mr Murray’s pots aspire to the condition of sculpture, the new works by young British artists… aspire to the condition of pottery,’ wrote one reviewer, highlighting the interplay between both forms. It’s directly reflected in the Hepworth’s approach; Ben Nicholson’s painting ‘1933 (Piquet)’ sits comfortably above Henry Moore’s ‘Head of a Woman’, two dark works crafted seven years apart.
Though grounded in post-war British studio pottery, The Art of the Potter extends into its legacies in global contemporary art. In the room’s centre, an enormous multi-level plinth displays 23 works by fifteen potters, including some particularly large vessels; but the most intriguing works can be found in the corners. Ryoji Koie’s ‘Chernobyl’ makes radical use of clay, rethinking the domestic ware as a medium for responding to historical events. Others, like Akiko Hirai, combine plural influences; one work adopts the shape of the Korean moon jar, a Japanese raku-like finish, and the name of an Italian writer.
The large, round pots of Magdalene Odundo – well-represented of late in London and Cambridge – speak to connections between British and African artists. During her residency at Abuja Pottery, Odundo met Michael Cardew, the Senior Pottery Officer for the Nigerian British colonial government, who had trained under the infamous Bernard Leach (other attendees included legends like Ladi Kwali and Lami Toto). Odundo, a member of the Nigeria Gwari ethnic group, adapted their traditional, women-led, pull method of pot-building for use in increasingly abstract forms. Her ‘hybrid pots’, many too heavy for purpose, again challenge the (gendered) reduction of ceramics to the ‘domestic’ sphere.
Wakefield was the first UK public collection to acquire Odundo’s works, as part of its progressive ‘Education Resource Service’ that purchased ceramics for children’s art education in the 1970s. And the Hepworth – with its eponymous exhibition, and annual ceramics fair – continues that legacy, curating clay with great stature.
There are more Hepworths to find – and ceramics to buy - at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There, Takahashi McGil – the collaborative name for artists Kaori Takahashi and Mark McGilvray – present a range of urushi bowls and ornaments. Combining traditional Japanese wood lacquer, with Western techniques, the vessels embrace imperfections in form. The most striking of the black bowls feature significant cracks.
As married artists, their relationship is personal as well as creative; he works in shape and form, she carves and lacquers. Whilst displayed across the world, including in Tokyo, their domestic wares are also products of domesticity and, with their honeycomb patterns and chopstick rests filled with twigs, sculptural connections between interior and exterior environments.
Hylton Nel: This plate is what I have to say is on view at Charleston, Lewes until 10 September 2023.
The Art of the Potter: Ceramics and Sculpture from 1930 to Now is on view at The Hepworth Wakefield until January 2024.
Takahashi McGil and Emma Lawrenson: Balance and Form is on view at Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 22 October 2023.
Charleston image credits: Marc Barben, Michael Stevenson.
The plate is an individual to the South African artist-potter Hylton Nel. Now 200 of them, produced from the 1960s to the present day, pepper the walls of Charleston, serving stories of his life and contemporary society. Born in 1941 in Zambia, Nel now practices from home in Calitzdorp in the Western Cape region of South Africa. And whilst some of his works have been crafted in response to the house, and the Bloomsbury Group artists who made it their home, most connect with its history more coincidentally.
Nel plays with his medium with the whimsy of David Shrigley. Some plates simply detail the meals he’s had to eat - ‘pickled tongue of beef and coarsly [sic] mashed potatoes. Quite nice.’ Others show biblical scenes. A thin glaze of contemporary politics covers them all: ‘Though the church cannot bless it has always buggered’.
Like Very Private?, Charleston’s previous exhibition of Duncan Grant’s erotic drawings, it’s explicit. Expect sex, cocks, and naked sculptures (in the books of the museum shop). One series references Francis Bacon, perhaps a nod to the artist’s own time spent in London.
Nel’s relationship with his sexuality is equally ambiguous; in one interview, he speaks of queerness as a ‘handicap of one’s development’. These complexities, however, remain relegated to the books, and Bloomberg Connects captions outside the exhibition.
This plate is what I have to say celebrates the artist’s experimental and playful artistic process. He challenges his form, altering the borders of the plates. Some mimic wood grain in their decoration. Others will never be seen; destruction is an equally important part of his practice.
Nel is best known for his ceramic plates, and though he distinguishes between his practices, he is a multidisciplinary artist, working in writing, painting, and sculpture. Like Betty Woodman, currently on show in the galleries opposite, his sculptural works are more ambitious in subject and style, and increasingly with age, but here we only catch glimpses of them in the texts outside the gallery walls.
Bruce McClean’s ‘Jug’ (1986) has something of Betty about it too, with its angular form, and figurative, facial, design. It sits at the start of the Hepworth Wakefield’s new display, The Art of the Potter, which connects the oft-separated histories of ceramicists and sculptors - in part, a response to two historic exhibitions.
It lent its title too an exhibition held at The Wakefield Art Gallery in 1959. But, earlier still, it draws from a Seven and Five Society exhibition at London’s Zwemmer Gallery in 1935, which included abstract sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, paintings by Ben Nicholson, and pottery by William Staite Murray.
Staite Murray had also previously exhibited works with Winifred Nicholson’s paintings and sculptures by Henry Moore. ‘If Mr Murray’s pots aspire to the condition of sculpture, the new works by young British artists… aspire to the condition of pottery,’ wrote one reviewer, highlighting the interplay between both forms. It’s directly reflected in the Hepworth’s approach; Ben Nicholson’s painting ‘1933 (Piquet)’ sits comfortably above Henry Moore’s ‘Head of a Woman’, two dark works crafted seven years apart.
Though grounded in post-war British studio pottery, The Art of the Potter extends into its legacies in global contemporary art. In the room’s centre, an enormous multi-level plinth displays 23 works by fifteen potters, including some particularly large vessels; but the most intriguing works can be found in the corners. Ryoji Koie’s ‘Chernobyl’ makes radical use of clay, rethinking the domestic ware as a medium for responding to historical events. Others, like Akiko Hirai, combine plural influences; one work adopts the shape of the Korean moon jar, a Japanese raku-like finish, and the name of an Italian writer.
The large, round pots of Magdalene Odundo – well-represented of late in London and Cambridge – speak to connections between British and African artists. During her residency at Abuja Pottery, Odundo met Michael Cardew, the Senior Pottery Officer for the Nigerian British colonial government, who had trained under the infamous Bernard Leach (other attendees included legends like Ladi Kwali and Lami Toto). Odundo, a member of the Nigeria Gwari ethnic group, adapted their traditional, women-led, pull method of pot-building for use in increasingly abstract forms. Her ‘hybrid pots’, many too heavy for purpose, again challenge the (gendered) reduction of ceramics to the ‘domestic’ sphere.
Wakefield was the first UK public collection to acquire Odundo’s works, as part of its progressive ‘Education Resource Service’ that purchased ceramics for children’s art education in the 1970s. And the Hepworth – with its eponymous exhibition, and annual ceramics fair – continues that legacy, curating clay with great stature.
There are more Hepworths to find – and ceramics to buy - at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There, Takahashi McGil – the collaborative name for artists Kaori Takahashi and Mark McGilvray – present a range of urushi bowls and ornaments. Combining traditional Japanese wood lacquer, with Western techniques, the vessels embrace imperfections in form. The most striking of the black bowls feature significant cracks.
As married artists, their relationship is personal as well as creative; he works in shape and form, she carves and lacquers. Whilst displayed across the world, including in Tokyo, their domestic wares are also products of domesticity and, with their honeycomb patterns and chopstick rests filled with twigs, sculptural connections between interior and exterior environments.
Hylton Nel: This plate is what I have to say is on view at Charleston, Lewes until 10 September 2023.
The Art of the Potter: Ceramics and Sculpture from 1930 to Now is on view at The Hepworth Wakefield until January 2024.
Takahashi McGil and Emma Lawrenson: Balance and Form is on view at Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 22 October 2023.
Charleston image credits: Marc Barben, Michael Stevenson.
The plate is an individual to the South African artist-potter Hylton Nel. Now 200 of them, produced from the 1960s to the present day, pepper the walls of Charleston, serving stories of his life and contemporary society. Born in 1941 in Zambia, Nel now practices from home in Calitzdorp in the Western Cape region of South Africa. And whilst some of his works have been crafted in response to the house, and the Bloomsbury Group artists who made it their home, most connect with its history more coincidentally.
Nel plays with his medium with the whimsy of David Shrigley. Some plates simply detail the meals he’s had to eat - ‘pickled tongue of beef and coarsly [sic] mashed potatoes. Quite nice.’ Others show biblical scenes. A thin glaze of contemporary politics covers them all: ‘Though the church cannot bless it has always buggered’.
Like Very Private?, Charleston’s previous exhibition of Duncan Grant’s erotic drawings, it’s explicit. Expect sex, cocks, and naked sculptures (in the books of the museum shop). One series references Francis Bacon, perhaps a nod to the artist’s own time spent in London.
Nel’s relationship with his sexuality is equally ambiguous; in one interview, he speaks of queerness as a ‘handicap of one’s development’. These complexities, however, remain relegated to the books, and Bloomberg Connects captions outside the exhibition.
This plate is what I have to say celebrates the artist’s experimental and playful artistic process. He challenges his form, altering the borders of the plates. Some mimic wood grain in their decoration. Others will never be seen; destruction is an equally important part of his practice.
Nel is best known for his ceramic plates, and though he distinguishes between his practices, he is a multidisciplinary artist, working in writing, painting, and sculpture. Like Betty Woodman, currently on show in the galleries opposite, his sculptural works are more ambitious in subject and style, and increasingly with age, but here we only catch glimpses of them in the texts outside the gallery walls.
Bruce McClean’s ‘Jug’ (1986) has something of Betty about it too, with its angular form, and figurative, facial, design. It sits at the start of the Hepworth Wakefield’s new display, The Art of the Potter, which connects the oft-separated histories of ceramicists and sculptors - in part, a response to two historic exhibitions.
It lent its title too an exhibition held at The Wakefield Art Gallery in 1959. But, earlier still, it draws from a Seven and Five Society exhibition at London’s Zwemmer Gallery in 1935, which included abstract sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, paintings by Ben Nicholson, and pottery by William Staite Murray.
Staite Murray had also previously exhibited works with Winifred Nicholson’s paintings and sculptures by Henry Moore. ‘If Mr Murray’s pots aspire to the condition of sculpture, the new works by young British artists… aspire to the condition of pottery,’ wrote one reviewer, highlighting the interplay between both forms. It’s directly reflected in the Hepworth’s approach; Ben Nicholson’s painting ‘1933 (Piquet)’ sits comfortably above Henry Moore’s ‘Head of a Woman’, two dark works crafted seven years apart.
Though grounded in post-war British studio pottery, The Art of the Potter extends into its legacies in global contemporary art. In the room’s centre, an enormous multi-level plinth displays 23 works by fifteen potters, including some particularly large vessels; but the most intriguing works can be found in the corners. Ryoji Koie’s ‘Chernobyl’ makes radical use of clay, rethinking the domestic ware as a medium for responding to historical events. Others, like Akiko Hirai, combine plural influences; one work adopts the shape of the Korean moon jar, a Japanese raku-like finish, and the name of an Italian writer.
The large, round pots of Magdalene Odundo – well-represented of late in London and Cambridge – speak to connections between British and African artists. During her residency at Abuja Pottery, Odundo met Michael Cardew, the Senior Pottery Officer for the Nigerian British colonial government, who had trained under the infamous Bernard Leach (other attendees included legends like Ladi Kwali and Lami Toto). Odundo, a member of the Nigeria Gwari ethnic group, adapted their traditional, women-led, pull method of pot-building for use in increasingly abstract forms. Her ‘hybrid pots’, many too heavy for purpose, again challenge the (gendered) reduction of ceramics to the ‘domestic’ sphere.
Wakefield was the first UK public collection to acquire Odundo’s works, as part of its progressive ‘Education Resource Service’ that purchased ceramics for children’s art education in the 1970s. And the Hepworth – with its eponymous exhibition, and annual ceramics fair – continues that legacy, curating clay with great stature.
There are more Hepworths to find – and ceramics to buy - at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There, Takahashi McGil – the collaborative name for artists Kaori Takahashi and Mark McGilvray – present a range of urushi bowls and ornaments. Combining traditional Japanese wood lacquer, with Western techniques, the vessels embrace imperfections in form. The most striking of the black bowls feature significant cracks.
As married artists, their relationship is personal as well as creative; he works in shape and form, she carves and lacquers. Whilst displayed across the world, including in Tokyo, their domestic wares are also products of domesticity and, with their honeycomb patterns and chopstick rests filled with twigs, sculptural connections between interior and exterior environments.
Hylton Nel: This plate is what I have to say is on view at Charleston, Lewes until 10 September 2023.
The Art of the Potter: Ceramics and Sculpture from 1930 to Now is on view at The Hepworth Wakefield until January 2024.
Takahashi McGil and Emma Lawrenson: Balance and Form is on view at Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 22 October 2023.
Charleston image credits: Marc Barben, Michael Stevenson.
The plate is an individual to the South African artist-potter Hylton Nel. Now 200 of them, produced from the 1960s to the present day, pepper the walls of Charleston, serving stories of his life and contemporary society. Born in 1941 in Zambia, Nel now practices from home in Calitzdorp in the Western Cape region of South Africa. And whilst some of his works have been crafted in response to the house, and the Bloomsbury Group artists who made it their home, most connect with its history more coincidentally.
Nel plays with his medium with the whimsy of David Shrigley. Some plates simply detail the meals he’s had to eat - ‘pickled tongue of beef and coarsly [sic] mashed potatoes. Quite nice.’ Others show biblical scenes. A thin glaze of contemporary politics covers them all: ‘Though the church cannot bless it has always buggered’.
Like Very Private?, Charleston’s previous exhibition of Duncan Grant’s erotic drawings, it’s explicit. Expect sex, cocks, and naked sculptures (in the books of the museum shop). One series references Francis Bacon, perhaps a nod to the artist’s own time spent in London.
Nel’s relationship with his sexuality is equally ambiguous; in one interview, he speaks of queerness as a ‘handicap of one’s development’. These complexities, however, remain relegated to the books, and Bloomberg Connects captions outside the exhibition.
This plate is what I have to say celebrates the artist’s experimental and playful artistic process. He challenges his form, altering the borders of the plates. Some mimic wood grain in their decoration. Others will never be seen; destruction is an equally important part of his practice.
Nel is best known for his ceramic plates, and though he distinguishes between his practices, he is a multidisciplinary artist, working in writing, painting, and sculpture. Like Betty Woodman, currently on show in the galleries opposite, his sculptural works are more ambitious in subject and style, and increasingly with age, but here we only catch glimpses of them in the texts outside the gallery walls.
Bruce McClean’s ‘Jug’ (1986) has something of Betty about it too, with its angular form, and figurative, facial, design. It sits at the start of the Hepworth Wakefield’s new display, The Art of the Potter, which connects the oft-separated histories of ceramicists and sculptors - in part, a response to two historic exhibitions.
It lent its title too an exhibition held at The Wakefield Art Gallery in 1959. But, earlier still, it draws from a Seven and Five Society exhibition at London’s Zwemmer Gallery in 1935, which included abstract sculptures by Barbara Hepworth, paintings by Ben Nicholson, and pottery by William Staite Murray.
Staite Murray had also previously exhibited works with Winifred Nicholson’s paintings and sculptures by Henry Moore. ‘If Mr Murray’s pots aspire to the condition of sculpture, the new works by young British artists… aspire to the condition of pottery,’ wrote one reviewer, highlighting the interplay between both forms. It’s directly reflected in the Hepworth’s approach; Ben Nicholson’s painting ‘1933 (Piquet)’ sits comfortably above Henry Moore’s ‘Head of a Woman’, two dark works crafted seven years apart.
Though grounded in post-war British studio pottery, The Art of the Potter extends into its legacies in global contemporary art. In the room’s centre, an enormous multi-level plinth displays 23 works by fifteen potters, including some particularly large vessels; but the most intriguing works can be found in the corners. Ryoji Koie’s ‘Chernobyl’ makes radical use of clay, rethinking the domestic ware as a medium for responding to historical events. Others, like Akiko Hirai, combine plural influences; one work adopts the shape of the Korean moon jar, a Japanese raku-like finish, and the name of an Italian writer.
The large, round pots of Magdalene Odundo – well-represented of late in London and Cambridge – speak to connections between British and African artists. During her residency at Abuja Pottery, Odundo met Michael Cardew, the Senior Pottery Officer for the Nigerian British colonial government, who had trained under the infamous Bernard Leach (other attendees included legends like Ladi Kwali and Lami Toto). Odundo, a member of the Nigeria Gwari ethnic group, adapted their traditional, women-led, pull method of pot-building for use in increasingly abstract forms. Her ‘hybrid pots’, many too heavy for purpose, again challenge the (gendered) reduction of ceramics to the ‘domestic’ sphere.
Wakefield was the first UK public collection to acquire Odundo’s works, as part of its progressive ‘Education Resource Service’ that purchased ceramics for children’s art education in the 1970s. And the Hepworth – with its eponymous exhibition, and annual ceramics fair – continues that legacy, curating clay with great stature.
There are more Hepworths to find – and ceramics to buy - at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There, Takahashi McGil – the collaborative name for artists Kaori Takahashi and Mark McGilvray – present a range of urushi bowls and ornaments. Combining traditional Japanese wood lacquer, with Western techniques, the vessels embrace imperfections in form. The most striking of the black bowls feature significant cracks.
As married artists, their relationship is personal as well as creative; he works in shape and form, she carves and lacquers. Whilst displayed across the world, including in Tokyo, their domestic wares are also products of domesticity and, with their honeycomb patterns and chopstick rests filled with twigs, sculptural connections between interior and exterior environments.
Hylton Nel: This plate is what I have to say is on view at Charleston, Lewes until 10 September 2023.
The Art of the Potter: Ceramics and Sculpture from 1930 to Now is on view at The Hepworth Wakefield until January 2024.
Takahashi McGil and Emma Lawrenson: Balance and Form is on view at Yorkshire Sculpture Park until 22 October 2023.
Charleston image credits: Marc Barben, Michael Stevenson.
