JENNIFER LEE 23 July - 16 August 2019
CERAMICS + MODERN ART
Erskine, Hall & Coe 15 Royal Arcade 28 Old Bond Street London, W1S 4SP
+44 (0) 20 7491 1706 mail@erskinehallcoe.com www.erskinehallcoe.com
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Jennifer Lee: Works from a Private Collection It has been quite a year for Jennifer Lee. In 2018 her beautiful pot, Pale, shadowed, speckled traces, fading ellipse, bronze specks, tilted shelf, 2017, won her the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize, only the second time the prize had been awarded. The exhibition, Things of Beauty Growing: British Studio Ceramics, had just closed at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, where Lee’s display of unglazed pots, standing free on a single plinth, was one of the highlights. And this year, on 9th July, her first solo museum show in the United Kingdom since 1994, Jennifer Lee: the potter’s space, opened at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge. While it may seem that full public recognition of Lee’s magisterial achievement as a potter has been long coming, that does not feel inappropriate. Hers is a slow growing art, which evolves incrementally from pot to pot, as Lee deepens and adjusts her vision and her expertise. In turn, each pot grows slowly, hand built from the base up, only finally expressing its entire beauty when it emerges from the kiln. This exhibition of thirteen pots, collected over a twenty year period, with pots dated from 1990 to 2011, offers an excellent opportunity to study and admire Lee’s progress. What is exceptional about the collection is the decisive particularity of the collector’s choice and judgment. The pots here share a remarkable consistency of form and quality, even as no two are alike. They are of a fairly uniform height and are mostly upright vessels, gently swelling from a narrow base before narrowing softly again to the neck. While the bodies of the vessels are largely symmetrical, they are made in a wide range of differently coloured clay with the full range of different effects, achieved through the fastidious use of metal oxides, for which Lee is known - haloes, flashes, speckles and traces. They are finished by a wide variety of rims, named, in Lee’s precise vocabulary, “coned rim”, “emerging rim”, “flat shelf rim” and “tilted rim”. Together the pots represent a coherent, ongoing investigation into form and material and yet each one, examined alone, has the vitality of a fresh and original creation. For the collector, Mark Pollack, this group reflects two decades of interest in Lee’s work. For Lee, discovering these pots again, some after many years, they are the hidden thread which has bound the years of friendship she has shared with Pollack, and a now clearly visible, distinct strand in her own creative development. For the wider public, this is the first time many of these pots have been seen in Britain. Two further pots from Pollack’s collection are currently on loan by Erskine, Hall & Coe to the exhibition at Kettle’s Yard, an indication of their significance within her oeuvre. Mark Pollack is a creative and highly successful textile designer renowned for the subtlety and inventiveness of his woven textiles. He is a serious collector of art across genres and media. As well as pots by Lee, Pollack has examples of the very different ceramic art of Ken Price, Ron Nagle and Geert Lap, among others. He explains, “I am very much a maker, a creator of woven textiles. So I have always been interested in how most things are made, their structure and what lies beneath the surface. When I first saw Jeff’s [Jennifer’s] work it had all that technical interest, but it was also incredibly beautiful and graceful.” Pollack says of the cohesiveness of his particular collection, which includes no bowls, “I don’t know if it was instinctual. I do like the elegance, the verticality of these and their subtlety. Although they reference utility, their utility does not overwhelm them.” He adds, “In Jeff’s work one of the delights is that there is also something going on inside - that something relates to what is on the outside but it is not the same, and it
refers to its structure.” Pollack goes on, “It would be easy to say that there is no variation in Jeff’s work - but within her oeuvre there is tremendous experimentation - the thickening of the wall of the vessel, a subtle tilt of the rim or bulging of the form, the colours and patterns that derive from the different oxides. That there is a tremendous amount going on in a very small area speaks to me.” Pollack has a particular fondness for the pots with “coned rims” - he collected four of them: “I just love how the aperture gets off-kilter. The void is thrown off its axis. And in the width of the rim itself, she is able to articulate that area as another plane.” Pollack also admires what he describes as “the quality of transparency” in Lee’s work, “as if she had peeled back the top layer to reveal this lighter surface. I can almost hear it tear.” He picks out especially Olive, three umber rings, 2007: “It has just three rings, but it has that torn quality.” Of the magnificent Olive, haloed granite bands, tilted rim, 2003, he says: “There is a reason we make three dimensional objects. This is really beautiful to see in the round - the bands widen and narrow and the relationship between them alters. If the form were not so simple all that would be lost. It has a dynamic, graphic quality.” Pollack kept this collection, carefully gathered over many years, together in a small space maybe 26 by 16 inches across, on a counter beside his cooker, as strapped for display space as many New Yorkers. Pollack acknowledges that this horrified Lee, at first. But he says, “They were so glorious that way. Even just seeing their rims, the variety is so rich.” He adds, “It would be nice if someone else were to appreciate these qualities, this particular aspect of her work. Jeff taken to an extreme.” For Lee herself, the encounter with pots she had not seen for a long time has been startling and instructive: “I really value the fact that Mark collected my work for so long. He was so particular. And so intently attuned, his extraordinary eye.” Most she remembers clearly: “I do remember each one, because I spend so much time on each one and because I draw them afterwards, which makes me look at them closely.” She notes successive waves of experimentation: for instance, the evolution of the first recorded flat shelf rim in 1990, followed by the appearance of the emerging rim later that year and then the appearance of the coned rim before the birth of her daughter Hannah, in 1995. Olive, three umber rings, from 2007, displays what Lee calls “vibrating bands”, the result of the carefully controlled reaction of different clay mixes, an effect Lee still at times pursues. As she says, “I’m always searching for new, unknown materials, for new methods of achieving colour, and also a different visual surface, a different depth.” Working, as she does, from pot to pot, or sometimes in small groups for particular shows, she had not expected this group necessarily to sing so harmoniously together. She comments “I was not seeking to make a conversation out of them, when I made them. But they are of an ilk, and they all sit incredibly well together because of Mark’s careful choosing, and his vision, and what he wanted to read through my work.” Emma Crichton-Miller is a writer, editor and arts journalist. She is the editor of The Design Edit and contributes regularly to the Financial Times, Apollo Magazine, Crafts Magazine and Ceramic Review.
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Biography Jennifer Lee was born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 1956. From 1975 to 1979 she studied ceramics and tapestry at Edinburgh College of Art; subsequently, she researched SouthWest Indian prehistoric ceramics and visited contemporary West Coast potters during an eight-month scholarship to the USA. From 1980 to 1983, Lee continued her work in ceramics at the Royal College of Art in London. Her pots are hand-built and are distinguished by her unique method of colouring them by mixing metallic oxides into the clay before making. Lee has had retrospective exhibitions of her work at the Röhsska Museet in Gothenburg, Sweden in 1993, and the Aberdeen Museum and Art Gallery, Scotland in 1994. Her work is represented in major international public collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2009, Lee was invited by Issey Miyake to exhibit at his foundation 21_21 Design Sight for the exhibition entitled U-TSU-WA. The installation was designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando. Her pots which were featured in the exhibition appeared to float on a vast pool of water behind which cascaded a thirty metre waterfall. Lee returned to Japan in Autumn 2013 to take part in the International Ceramic Art Festival in Sasama, and was a guest artist in residence at The Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park for two months in 2014 and again in 2015 and 2018. In 2018, Lee won the annual LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize. Jennifer Lee lives and works in London and regularly exhibits in internationally. An extensive list of solo and group exhibitions is available to view on our website. Awards 2018 2001 1998 1994 1991 1989 1987 1985 1984 1983 1979
LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize, Winner 1st World Ceramic Biennale, Award of Honour, Korea Bayerischer Staatspreis, Germany Scottish Arts Council Exhibitions Grant, UK The British Council, Grants to Artists, UK The British Council, Grants to Artists, UK Crafts Council, London, Special Projects Grant, UK Crafts Council, London, Individual’s Grant, UK Jugend Gestaltet Prize, Munich, Germany Mathildenhöhe Award, Rosenthal, Germany Allen Lane Penguin Book Award Crafts Council, New Craftsman’s Grant, UK David Gordon Memorial Trust Prize Andrew Grant Travelling Scholarship to USA
Public Collections Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums, UK Alfred Ceramic Art Museum, New York, USA Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK British Museum, London, UK Buckinghamshire County Museum, UK Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, USA CellMark, Gothenburg, Sweden Contemporary Art Society, London, UK Crafts Council Collection, London, UK Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, USA Europäisches Kunsthandwerk Landesgewerbeamt, Stuttgart, Germany Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Toronto, Canada Glasgow Museum and Art Galleries, UK Hawkes Bay Art Gallery and Museum, Napier, New Zealand Hove Museum and Art Gallery, UK Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg, Germany Leeds City Art Gallery, UK Long Beach Museum of Art, USA LongHouse Reserve Collection, New York, USA Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art, Mashiko, Japan Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, UK Minneapolis Institute of Arts, USA Musée Ariana, Geneva, Switzerland Musée Bellerive, Zurich, Switzerland Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Germany National Museum, Stockholm, Sweden Norwich Castle Museum, UK Peters Foundation, London, UK Peter Siemssen Foundation for Ceramic Art, Germany Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA Röhsska Museet, Gothenburg, Sweden Royal Museum, Edinburgh, UK Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, UK San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, Texas, USA Scottish Collection, SDA, Edinburgh, UK Scripps College, Claremont, USA Thamesdown Collection, Museum and Art Gallery, Swindon, UK The Hepworth Wakefield, UK The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA The Museum of Ceramic Art, Hyogo, Japan The Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, Shigaraki, Japan Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, Japan Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK
List of Works All works are made of handbuilt coloured stoneware JL-0064
Pale, layered speckled rim, 2000 16 x 11.7 cm
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Pale, speckled emerging rim, 1994 17.8 x 12 cm
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Grey polished, flat shelf rim, 1990 17.7 x 12.2 cm
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Olive, three umber rings, 2007 17.7 x 12.1 cm
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Pale, speckled spiral, flat shelf rim, 1991 18 x 13.1 cm
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Olive, haloed granite bands, tilted rim, 2003 19.8 x 11.9 cm
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Pale, haloed olive granite coned rim, 1996 20 x 10.6 cm
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Pale, haloed granite flashes, 1998 18.8 x 11.2 cm
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Sand grained, dark base, flat shelf rim, 1995 19.3 x 11.8 cm
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Olive, granite bands, coned rim, 1995 20.8 x 12.7 cm
JL-0076 * Slate blue, graphite clusters, tilted olive shelf, 2011 21.6 x 14.4 cm JL-0077 Peat, sand specked, flat shelf rim, 1999 21.9 x 13.5 cm JL-0078
Sand grained fleck, laminated shelf rim, 2005 22 x 13.5 cm
* Works included in Jennifer Lee: the potter’s space, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge
The exhibition is illustrated online at www.erskinehallcoe.com/exhibitions/jennifer-lee-2019/ Design by Rebecca Wilson Printed by Witherbys Lithoflow Printing Studio photography by Stuart Burford Installation photography by Andy Stagg