Ceramics painted with smoke – and more…
David Roberts
VISITING Yorkshireman Henry Moore's studio in 1969, he showed me a small clay maquette of a reclining figure, one of six to be much enlarged and cast in bronze. Asking what happened next, he said his team would do the rest. Each later valued at £ 3M, so £ 18M in total. Not a bad return on a morning's work!
There must be something special about Yorkshire's 'terroir' that gives its artists a distinct sense of mission, and charisma. Hockney, Hepworth, Hirst, Heron, and our Henry - clearly an "H" Helps! Plus excellent trumpet-blowing skills!
In the art market, signature counts for everything when it comes to value. Catalogues raisonné s are fiercely guarded. Authentication keeps a host of specialists in business – auctioneers, gallerists, academics, paper, paint, material and handwriting analysts, insurers. Ironically, if your work is getting faked, you've made it! Now AI is trying to steal human creativity and authenticity… .unless it's Raku pottery, in which case every piece is unique, beyond fakery and AI both.
Paddy Harley - Orbicular
Strictly speaking Raku is a misnomer, named after a Korean family of potters making work for Shogun warlords in 16th Century Japan. Early western interest in Japanese ceramics owes much to potter Bernard Leach, who moved there aged three in 1890. Around 1910 he met Soetsu Yanagi, keen to introduce western art after three centuries of national isolation, and author of The Unknown Craftsman. Yanagi describes Japanese folk art as part of a spiritual tradition of anonymity, and egolessness, with objects not made, but born.
Back to Yorkshire, and ceramic artist David Roberts, exhibiting at 27 Art House, Berwick-upon-Tweed, from October 27. Forty years ago he was one of a few international potters developing Painting With Smoke, aka Naked Raku. Once coiled or thrown, the pot is brushed with protective slip, fired at low temperature (c 850C), then quickly transferred to a container full of combustible material like sawdust or newspaper, then lidded to exclude oxygen, thus forcing smoke into crackle lines created by shrinkage from the original firing.
Judith Davies - Seastone
Roberts says, "The balance between control and uncertainty is paralleled in life itself, in man's attempt to make order out of chaos." The patterning of the Yorkshire Moors inspires his work, reflecting "the dynamic rhythms of landscape and its interaction with water and erosion." Sadly, part of the man-made chaos includes smoke from wildfires in recent years on Marsden Moor, near Holmfirth, where he has his studio.
It's such a privilege to have David Roberts's final solo show in Berwick-upon-Tweed. That's thanks to Arthouse 27's gallery owner Amy Izat, and to multidisciplinary artist Paddy Hartley, whose practice spans sculpture, ceramics and installation. He studied at Huddersfield School of Art, in the late 1980s, and was learning about Raku when he was introduced to David Roberts.
Paddy Hartley and fellow ceramic artist Judith Davies, based in Forfar, will exhibit together for three weeks in October. Paddy's ongoing series, Glazed Landscape, is inspired by coastline, estuary and landscape surrounding Berwick.
Using photographs to highlight patterns of erosion, movement and transformation, he translates these into layered ceramic surfaces. Multiple glazes interact during firing, producing complex but predictable effects, the result of experimentation with flow dynamics in applying and accumulating the glaze, and masking. I see these like three dimensional windows, inviting me into a startlingly magical take on the familiar littoral of the Tweed estuary. He will be in residence with Berwick's Straw Yard in October.
Judith Davies too finds inspiration in the coast. Her small touchstones, designed to be held, are the very opposite to Paddy's work. Holding one and suddenly the colour, texture and shapes of the coast are literally in hand. She also creates sculptural Standing Sea-Stones, handmade from porcelain, textured, the markings imbued with natural pigments, including indigo and ochre, enhancing handmade marks.
Taken together, this month long celebration of ceramic art is much more than the sum of its parts. It's a celebration of the way human hand, heart and spirit can work together to produce unique, unreproducible artefacts, perfect in their imperfection, like their makers, and not so much a challenge to the threat of AI as an indifference, a "so-what?".
In Taoism, it's called Wu-Wei, effortless action, the principle that yielding is profound strength. If somebody lunges at you, step back, and they fall! No surprise that more young people are looking to a living using their hands. For them, for all of us, these exhibitions represent both inspiration and encouragement.
Paddy Hartley and Judith Davies, Oct 3 to 26
David Roberts: October 27 to November 17.
Both at 27 Art House, Berwick
amyizat.com/27-art-house/
davidroberts-ceramics.com/
paddy-hartley.com
