Curator's View - October 2015

The Gallery's featured maker programme is designed to achieve a number of objectives. Firstly, to highlight those makers that the gallery has represented for some years and give them the opportunity to exhibit new work, Secondly,  to introduce ceramicists, who are new to the gallery - although many will be well established figures - to maintain the freshness and diversity which has become one of the signatures of the gallery.  I know that I tend to go on about diversity but it is the apparently endless range of invention and creativity that sustains the interest of so many ceramic enthusiasts.
In October, we again have three featured makers one of whom is new to the gallery.

KYRA CANE

 has a reputation as a teacher of ceramics in many well known institutions, including the late lamented Harrow course and also as a maker of fine pots. She is a thrower who enjoys the physical and sensual work with clay to produce organic vessels with impressive abstract decoration. It is a pleasure to see her work at Bevere for the first time.



PAUL JACKSON

will need little introduction from me; he has exhibited here on a number of occasions over the last decade. Paul never stands still and his creative biography is one of constant development and experimentation always producing work to stimulate the senses. Paul is a ceramic artist whose constant aim is to create synergy between volume and decoration - expect no less this month.




LAURA MURPHY

will be known to those that voted her No 1 in our annual Graduate Show last January. This feature is part of our commitment to her as the winner to support and promote her during the following year. She continues to make and develop her work as will be seen from this group of pieces. Her pots continue to sell and generate interest and positive reactions.  I wish her well as she embarks on her career as a professional studio potter.

These are of course featured makers but we also have a wide range of studio potters in the gallery.

An important event this month is the 50th Anniversary

of MUCHELNEY Pottery in Somerset run by John Leach. To celebrate this fine achievement we will be showing a small group of the standard ware for which Muchelney is well known. It is a pleasure to promote the work of potters who have developed and sustained their business over the past five decades.

7000th Painting - ZOE TAYLOR'S "Bluster"

 This is the 7000th painting we have offered  in the Gallery and on line. 

Zoe is one of our most popular artists with our visitors and lives locally. 

This is what she says about her work-

 

"You know those very ‘British’ days we get here? Those days where the clouds scud across the sky and you decide to take a walk and a look at the view? Those days when that patch of blue disappears and all of a sudden you know that you are going to get rain splattered very soon - well that’s the sort of day and 'BLUSTER 'is the description of that wind that carries the rain right at you !

I work in a sketchbook when I’m out and about and that sketchbook feeds my studio work. The pages these days are dirty and splodgy and inky and black and an impression of the place rather than directly representational. I record that wind, rain and light in scratches and muddy splashes across my paintings - trying to capture that energy that you feel out in the wind and the rain.

I also have scenes in my head, as if by osmosis by being in the landscape, and once I start a painting then the sketch and the memory seem to come together and so the process moves along and drifts from the original inspiration. This is why most of my paintings rarely have a place name attached to them, they are as much about the elements as the place.

Bluster started life as a sketch usually work with acrylics on heavyweight watercolour paper. You have to work fast with acrylics so I find that the energy has to be there right from the beginning - if you want to mark the paint in any way, it has to be done whilst that paint is still wet enough to take the mark. Paper sucks the moisture away from the pigment and I just love the feel of the paint across the paper.

My work is still maturing but I feel that it has a long way to go. I’m looking forward to some time in Cornwall in October and hope to do some more direct work outside in the field, working directly to a finished piece, rather than into a sketchbook, to give a more immediate response.h from quite a few years ago and evolved as I worked."

 

Zoe's paintings hanging in Bevere Gallery

MUCHELNEY POTTERY

 Muchelney Pottery's 50th anniversary Bevere Gallery has represented Muchelney pottery for almost as long as we have been a specialist ceramic gallery. This is but a fraction of the time that this famous pottery has been working. 50 years ago - in 1965 - John Leach established the pottery and it has been a highly productive and successful enterprise ever since – apart from the debacle of the floods on the Somerset levels which closed down the pottery more than once.

This is a wonderful anniversary and we celebrate with them 50 years of making high quality standard ware as well as the personal pots of John, Nic Rees - who has only been there for forty years - and Mark Melbourne.

Many congratulations and long may the pottery flourish.

Newsy article by Potter Pete Higgs "Spooky Event"

 "I just wanted to share this with you, it may make an interesting piece for the blog!

Iain and I were recently in France on a house hunting trip and decided this time to rent a gite as we were basing our search in the area just south of Poitiers. Online I found a lovely gite near Ruffec called Le Bois de L'Eglise and we had a great week. The owners, Tony and Bev are a great couple and have been really helpful with our house search and the evening before we left, they asked us over to their farmhouse for a meal. Halfway through the meal on the terrace, I glanced over to the doorway and did a double take. There on a stand next to the door was one of my leaf sculptures! It turned out that Tony had bought it for Bev a few years ago from the Bevere Gallery website. And it was shipped over to them.

We were all dumbfounded by this chance of fate. What are the odds that I randomly choose this location to stay and this gite too. Even then, if Tony and Bev hadn't been such a nice couple, then we wouldn't have been on their terrace to be reunited with one of my own sculptures 700 miles from home?"

Pete

 This leaf was sold during Bevere Gallery's very first Sculpture Trail in the Gardens of Bevere Knoll

Through the years Pete has made numerous garden sculptures including many leaves.  We do have just one leaf  at the moment available in the Gallery.

 k

THE CURATOR'S VIEW – September 2015

"We are grateful for the continuing positive feedback from the Gallery's visitors. Whilst most of it is complimentary about so many aspects of what we try to achieve, it is the engagement itself between staff and visitor that is most important whatever opinions are expressed.

Studio ceramics is a live craft; it impacts on our senses as good art should and often demands to be touched. There is something almost preternatural about the pleasure we gain from holding or caressing a tactile vessel or sculptural piece. Equally it is clear that even the inexperienced gallery visitor gains something from articulating his or her feelings about a maker's work. We will always encourage that dialogue – please do chat with us when you have the chance.      

Adam Frew

is the new name to the Gallery this month. He lives and works in Northern Ireland. He loves to throw pots - which is good news in the era of the cast and computer-designed vessel. His signature is his quirky decoration which adds a strong contemporary feel to his functional work. It is that quirkiness which brings renewed pleasure to the owner on each occasion they are used."

Rachel Wood

has featured at Bevere a number of times over past years and her work always pleases. She is strongly influenced by the spirit of place, as a recent residency in Australia demonstrated. Her distinctive painterly decoration will impress those who have not seen her work before and renew the admiration of those that have. I am particularly taken with the shape and volume of her bowls. I know that presence is an overworked word in our vocabulary but they certainly have it.

Chiu-I Wu

is a ceramic sculptor with self-evident oriental influences – she was born in Taiwan - but with a contemporary design that appealed to so many who saw and bought her work when she was last at Bevere. Her craft skills are of the highest order with immaculate attention to detail. This is work that is about line and perspective – it is often that elegance of the whole look of her work that catches the eye. More than that the pieces are distinctly hers".

Stuart Dickens

Curator's View - August 2015

This month is particularly interesting.  Two of our featured makers have been included because I saw them when they shared a large stand at Ceramic Art London in 2014 - something I don’t think had been done before.  Dennis Farrell and  





Angela Verdon

 have known each other for a long time and they recognised that their utterly contrasting styles would create an impact that would do much to enhance both their work – and so it did. 

I was particularly impressed and felt then that they should be seen in tandem at Bevere. Dennis will be known to some of our visitors for his organic painterly pots strongly influenced by land and seascape. Angela’s pieces are sculptural, sinuous pure white pieces that demand our attention. It will be her first showing at Bevere. The challenge for me will be to maximise the contrasting bodies of work to the benefit of both. Let me know what you think.

Linda Styles

 is the third featured maker and provides yet more contrast. Described as a heady mix of the quirky, haunting and thoughtful, her work is not easy to categorise. Abstract decoration with a free use of contrasting colours gives her pots a

--> ‘second look’ quality which has been a characteristic of her work for some time. Linda is a three dimensional ceramic artist whose work is uncompromising and strikingly original.

During this month we will also be showing new work by Andrew Palin.

A completely different colour palette marks his return to making after recovering from a major operation. Once again we see how time out from the business of making is often the trigger for a change in creative direction.

To say there is something here for everyone is a cliché I know, but part of the joy of curating is to bring together unexpected alliances and to indulge in free-wheeling contrasts. It works for me!

Stuart Dickens - Ceramic Curator

THE CURATOR’S VIEW – JULY 2015

This month we have four featured makers. Two have never shown at Bevere before and it is a pleasure to have them here throughout July and hopefully beyond.

James Campbell is a distinguished maker and I cannot understand why we have not shown him before. Never mind, I am delighted that his work is here now. His focus is very much on the relationship between form and image. The painted scenes on his functional pieces are about the spirit of place and as you turn a jug or look at a plate from a different angle new perspectives emerge. This is the joy of three dimensional painting.

Daniel Boyle makes wood-fired, salt-glazed ware with a strong contemporary feel. The craft tradition is here, sure enough, as you succumb to the desire to handle this tactile work. Studio ceramics can bring so much added pleasure to mealtimes and I am in no doubt that Daniel’s work epitomises that notion.

Peter Hayes has shown at Bevere over a number of years and his creativity never falters. This small group of pieces has emerged from his work in developing a craft village in India. He has given much to local craftsmen and, in turn, he has discovered new materials and processes. These pieces, shown along with some of the more recent ceramic work we have of Peter’s, are made of bronze and glass to brilliant and original effect.  

 

Wendy Kershaw uses porcelain, as she says, to ‘illustrate an intimate world in which small acts of everyday life are imbued with importance’. Skilled artwork and her sideways look at the world produces wall pieces which we know our visitors will be drawn to. Once again we are showing the work of an original talent and along with our other featured makers we have a rich and diverse mix in the Bevere tradition.

 Stuart Dickens