OCGcollectPressRelease

‘Working with’ Oxford Ceramics Gallery stand at Collect 2018 curated in collaboration with Amanda Game.

22nd - 25th February 2018 Saatchi Gallery Duke of York’s HQ King’s Road London SW3 4RY

Garry Fabian Miller, Hearth Rug, The Ruby Embers, 2016 Wool with linen backing Tufted by Kristi Vana and Louise Trotter at Dovecot Tapestry Studio, Edinburgh182 × 220cm, Edition 3/3 photo: Kenneth Gray

Since opening in 2011 the Oxford Ceramics Gallery has mounted some forty exhibitions and the owners, Rachel Ackland and James Fordham, have travelled the country to visit private collectors and meet contemporary makers in their studios. Last year they began working with independent curator and former Director of the Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh, Amanda Game, to create a series of occasional bespoke events and exhibitions for us which launched with Re-Naturing the Vessel - a new collaboration between Julian Stair and Simone ten Hompel - last November. This was followed by a special Oxford Study Day with the Ashmolean Museum this Spring, celebrating work commissioned in our city by Jim Partridge and Liz Walmsley and Wendy Ramshaw CBE. This Collect Art Fair stand is their most recent collaboration.

From Left: Beaker, Plate, Spoon and Object on Rectangular White Ground by Julian Stair and Simone Ten Hompel, 2017; Contained Box, by Andrea Walsh, 2016; Small Round Vessel and Craggy Sphere by Jim Partridge, 2017. Photos: Michael Harvey

We are delighted to present ‘Working with’ as our first stand for Collect Art Fair.

We have taken the theme of ‘Collaboration’ and ‘Working With’ as a way of drawing together beautiful, important work by artists in different traditions and across generations whose works we admire and show regularly in Oxford.

There is a central focus on ceramics but shown alongside furniture, metalwork and textiles to give context and to highlight new relationships and directions being explored by the Oxford Ceramics Gallery. Selected works will offer insight into the different ways artists ‘work with’ materials; how makers can work with, and re-imagine, both ideas and traditions; how they work with time, memory; and of course, how they work with others, and with the experience of being human. This concept of ‘working with’ also feels important for our times. Critically all exhibitors are, in our view, important contemporary contributors to the artistic and intellectual traditions of hands-on studio experimentation and production.

James Fordham (Director)

From left: Vase with Flared Rim by Lucie Rie, c1985; 'City' by Bodil Manz, 2017. Photos: Michael Harvey and Michael Harris.

James has sourced a wonderful collection of historic works by Hans Coper and Lucie Rie from private collectors. Furniture designers Jim Partridge and Liz Walmsley will be showing a newly created version of their landmark carved oak Block Seat together with some new collaborative vessel designs; the superb Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh are completing ‘Red Embers’ for the show: the last in an editioned series of dramatic tufted wool rugs created in collaboration with artist Garry Fabian Miller; Julian Stair and Simone ten Hompel are moving onto the next phase of their joint investigation of the domestic vessel in clay and metal, following their successful show Re-naturing the Vessel; Andrea Walsh is completing a major new three vessel installation in glass and porcelain seen under development in the recent Womans Hour Craft Prize exhibition at the V & A Museum; Distinguished Danish potter, Bodil Manz, will be represented by an installation of translucent porcelain cylinders - the dynamic resonant forms that she has worked with for more than four decades.

Full details of the event and high res images are available.

Oxford Ceramics Gallery, 29 Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6AA, is open from Monday to Saturday 11am to 6pm (Sunday by appointment). Telephone 01865 512320, email sales@oxfordceramics.com or visit www.oxfordceramics.com.

For further information and images please contact: Rachel Ackland, rachel@oxfordceramics.com, 01865 512320