Sara Flynn

SAR A F LYN N 3 - 25 October 2018

15 Royal Arcade, 28 Old Bond Street, London, W1S 4SP +44 (0) 20 7491 1706 mail@erskinehallcoe.com www.erskinehallcoe.com

Flection Vessel, 2018 porcelain, 31 cm high (SF-0246)

Flection Vessel, 2018 porcelain, 23.5 cm high (SF-0211)

Flection Vessel, 2018 porcelain, 28 cm high (SF-0226)

Ipseity Vessel, 2018 porcelain, 20.5 cm high (SF-0210)

Flection Vessel, 2018, porcelain, 27 cm high (SF-0232)

Spine Camber Vessel, 2018 porcelain, 10.5 cm high (SF-0212)

Double Spine Camber Vessel, 2017, porcelain, 23 cm high (SF-0223)

SF-0220 & SF-0219

Spine Camber Vessel, 2017, porcelain, 25.5 cm high (SF-0219)

SF-0231, SF-0238 & SF-0237

Flection Vessel, 2018, porcelain, 26 cm high (SF-0231)

Flection Vessel, 2018 porcelain, 31 cm high (SF-0247)

Flection Vessel, 2018 porcelain, 33 cm high (SF-0248)

Flection Vessel, 2018, porcelain, 21 cm high (SF-0228)

Spine Camber Vessel, 2018 porcelain, 9.5 cm high (SF-0214)

Flection Vessel, 2018, porcelain, 23 cm high (SF-0230)

Spine Camber Vessel, 2018 porcelain, 11 cm high (SF-0217)

Camber Vessel, 2018, porcelain, 24 cm high (SF-0235)

Untitled, 2018 bronze, 16.5 cm high (SF-0242)

Flection Vessel, 2018, porcelain, 21.5 cm high (SF-0229)

Untitled, 2018 bronze, 13.5 cm high (SF-0244)

Flection Vessel, 2018, porcelain, 31 cm high (SF-0246)

Flection Vessel, 2018, porcelain, 31.5 cm high (SF-0245)

Spine Camber Vessel, 2018 porcelain, 9 cm high (SF-0215)

Camber Vessel, 2018 porcelain, 21 cm high (SF-0233)

Untitled, 2018 bronze, 14 cm high (SF-0243)

Camber Vessel, 2018, porcelain, 23 cm high (SF-0236)

SF-0249, SF-0224, SF-0221 & SF-0222

Faceted Esker Vessel, 2018, porcelain, 37 cm high (SF-0224)

Camber Vessel, 2017 23.5 cm high (SF-0227)

Camber Vessel, 2018 porcelain, 25 cm high (SF-0225)

I find it almost impossible to explain why I love and acquire the work of one ceramic artist (or any artist for that matter) and not the work of others. In the beginning there is a visceral, almost chemical reaction to their work - that’s essential and always the case.

Later there are practicalities to consider, especially, obviously, price, but if the work is ceramic and made by a comparatively unknown maker this is usually manageable. I tend more and more to worry about the, at least medium term, conservation/preservation of a work, but again, with ceramics this is not usually a problem unless the piece is incredibly fragile. I certainly don’t think about where the work will go but mostly new things find a home where I can see them every day. That intimate interreaction helps me know if I have found an artist I want to continue to follow or not.

What immediately attracted me to Sara Flynn’s pots, when I first saw them in County Cork in 2013, was the combination of the rather formal black exterior with the highly informal pinches and squeezes. They are extremely tactile and at the same time abstract and rather distant. I began to acquire Sara’s work and have continued to do so, adding pieces at least every year for quite a while now. In general our collecting, or as I prefer to describe it, our accumulation of works, follows no rules [except affordability] and recognises no boundaries such as nationality. We buy old things sometimes, usually with a connection to Chatsworth, and we buy work from living artists, both recent and less so.

With artists we continue to follow we have occasionally sought earlier work to add depth to our understanding of their development but with Sara that has not been necessary, as we became aware of her work fairly early on.

As I have collected a number of Sara’s works, I have been able to experiment with their display. In the illustration, I made a linear group of her works for one of the mantelpieces in the Great Dining Room here at Chatsworth. Fortunately, visitors can get quite close to the work and I hope that it surprises and delights them as much as it does me. I had a smaller group of Sara’s pots in this room about three years ago and I thought that it worked well also. I do have some of her work in white and a yellowish colour as well as grey, but I tend to return to the black, especially if I am composing a group for the Visitor Route. As well as the group in the Great Dining Room, I have a number of her pots scattered in the rooms that we live in and I move these around frequently, sometimes settling for a single pot, sometimes working up to a group of more than a dozen. It is almost impossible not to touch and adjust the larger groups as you walk past them, her work is incredibly tactile and that is another major part of its appeal.

Although Sara’s work has changed over the years, not only in shape but also in colour, I find that the different generations mix extremely well. When I talked to Sara about this foreword, I was pleased and relieved to discover that she likes mixing her pieces with the work of other artists and although I am nervous about doing this – arranging an artist’s work alone is hard enough – I am sure I will display mixed groups here at Chatsworth more in the future.

The Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth House, 2018

Sara Flynn b. 1971

Sara attended the Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork, where she trained in ceramic design. She established her studio in Kinsale in 2000, and then in Leap, West Cork in 2006. She now lives in Belfast and her work concentrates on decorative vessels in porcelain and abstract forms in bronze.

Her career began by producing small, functional pots, and her work has developed entirely into one-off forms which are purely sculptural in their intent.

It is distinguished by tactile surfaces and a rich spectrum of colours, ranging from cool and subtle whites and celadons to rich and complex greys and blacks and which, more recently, has grown to include yellows, oranges, pinks and greens.

The meticulous attention to detail in choosing both the forms made and the glazes applied results in work that is particularly refined and elegant.

Many international public and private collections feature Sara’s work, and it has also been illustrated in several publications. Sara has been a selected maker for the Design & Crafts Council of Ireland’s ‘Portfolio - Critical Selection’ each year since 2006 and has been a member of the experts panel for the Loewe Craft Prize since 2018.

Selected Exhibitions 2018 2017

2016 2015 2014 2012

Sara Flynn, Erskine, Hall & Coe, London, UK Chance Encounters 3 - Lionel Wendt, Richard Smith, Sara Flynn, curated by Jonathan Anderson, Miami Design District, Miami, FL, USA Disobedient Bodies, JW Anderson Curates, The Hepworth Gallery, Wakefield, UK Sara Flynn, Erskine, Hall & Coe, London, UK Ontogeny, Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown, Northern Ireland Sara Flynn, Erskine, Hall & Coe, London, UK Sara Flynn, Erskine, Hall & Coe, London, UK

Public Collections The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA (gift of Michael and Tamara Root) Chatsworth House, Chatsworth, UK Columbus State University, Georgia, USA Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK (gift of Sir Nicholas and Lady Judith Goodison) The Gardiner Museum, Toronto, Canada The Hunt Museum, Limerick, Ireland Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Embassies Collection (Irish embassies in Canberra, Australia, Madrid, Spain, The Hague, The Netherlands and Beijing, China) National Museum of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland Office of Public Works, Farmleigh House, Dublin, Ireland Shanghai Municipal People’s Government, China Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK (purchase funded by Christopher M. Gorman-Evans)

Awards & Other Achievements 2017 2016 2010 2007 2006 2005

Loewe Craft Prize Finalist Merit Award, The Golden Fleece Winner of the Peter Brennan Pioneering Potter, Ceramics Ireland Award Travel Bursary Award by the Crafts Council of Ireland Travel Bursary Award by the Crafts Council of Ireland Research and Development Award by the Design & Crafts Council of Ireland

The exhibition is illustrated online at www.erskinehallcoe.com/exhibitions/sara-flynn-2018/ Design by fivefourandahalf Printed by Witherbys Lithoflow Printing Studio photography by Stuart Burford Installation photography by Andy Stagg

Flection Vessel, 2018 porcelain, 28.5 cm high (SF-0249)