Lectures
Lectures for the International Ceramics Festival 2013 have now been selected.
Lecturers confirmed for the 2013 International Ceramics Festival:
Bonnie Kemske
Bonnie Kemske will chair the Postgraduate Symposium 2013: Ceramics Review Editor Bonnie Kemske will chair our symposium at the 2013 festival ‘Postgraduate Studies – What’s the point’.
Anne Gibbs
Ceramicist Anne Gibbs will give a visual presentation at the 2013 festival on how two residencies in 2009, one at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia and the other at Cove Park in Scotland, have had an impact on her current practice. During the 2013 festival Anne will be taking part in a Artist In Residency placement at Aberystwyth Arts Centre.
Lawrence Epps
Bored at work? Trapped in a world of endless office politics? Hear the artist Lawrence Epps talk about his own experiences of corporate culture and how he uses that time to inspire his ceramic sculptures exploring the experience of the individual within the corporate environment.
Lawrence Epps is a British artist who won the Fresh Award at the 2011 British Ceramics Biennial. Since that time his work has been exhibited in galleries, museums and sculpture parks in the UK and abroad.
For more information on one of Lawrence Epps’ recent project visit: www.sykey.org
Felicity Aylieff
Felicity Aylieff is an artist of international standing recognised for her research into large scale ceramics. Working from her studio in Bath for more than 3 decades, she has more recently developed a collaborative relationship with manufactories in Jingdezhen, China where she makes monumental pots. Felicity will give a talk about her ‘double life’, working in both the UK and China. The talk will explore the technicalities of working on a large scale and the impact and change this has had on what she makes. She will also explore the development and translation of drawing, mark making, and pattern that forms the content of my work.
Li Wenying
In 2000, after graduating from the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute, founded with her brother Jackson Li the Jingdezhen Sanbao Ceramic Art Institute. Wenying is Programme Director and continues to organize tours and visits to potters in China as well as the International Residency Programme at Sanbao.
A title for the lecture:
The Changing Face of Jingdezhen and Sanbao’s return to Source
Jingdezhen is the porcelain capital of China but in the last ten years it has almost changed beyond recognition. At Sanbao, we have over the last decade, sought to recapture those traditions that established, for more than a thousand years, the craftsmanship of Jingdezhen potters whose ceramics can be seen in museums throughout the world. Both Chinese and potters from abroad have shared their common experience during their residencies at Sanbao and, I think, have gone away the richer.
Walter Keeler
Mick Casson Memorial Lecture
The pottery tradition is at the heart of all my work. Pottery for use has been central to all settled human communities. Seldom merely functional, it has been a vehicle for expression and the fulfilment of a delight in the pleasure of handling a sensual and incredibly versatile material; the useful bound up with the intellect and the imagination.
I discovered pottery as a boy, becoming intimate with fragments of ancient pots picked up on the beaches of the Thames in London. They infiltrated my mind and my senses, giving me an insight to the syntax of thrown pottery; a sense of what is authentic, which I only fully understood as I gained experience in the craft.
So my work is informed by my passion for pots from the past, but also by making and firing, and the world and times in which I live. Sometimes I make simple useful things like mugs or jugs, on other occasions my work is less straightforward, making demands, even challenging the user to negotiate with an unexpected pot to do an ordinary job. I hope my pottery brings with its seriousness, some humour and sensual pleasure.
Michael Goldmark
Mike Goldmark will talk about his gallery’s involvement with ceramics, touching on the reasons why the gallery started to sell ceramics and how it so rapidly achieved the high levels of sales for which it is renowned. He will also reveal the gallery’s unique methods of promoting and supporting its potters and how he sees the future of selling and collecting pots.
Mike Goldmark this year celebrates his 50th year as a shopkeeper. From high fashion menswear in the ’60s to art and ceramics today, he has retained a remarkably old-fashioned ethos to shopkeeping while embracing the very latest in modern communications. His last flirtation with the fashionable ended in the late ’60s, since when he has endeavoured to sell only that which he felt would be of lasting value. With his team of nearly 30, he nows sells all over the world from his base in the tiny English market town of Uppingham.
Tanya Harrod
Tanya Harrod will give a talk on Michael Cardew (1901-1983) – Modern Pots, Colonialism and the Counterculture.
Tanya Harrod is the author of The Crafts in Britain in the 20th Century(1999) and The Last Sane Man: Michael Cardew, Colonialism and the Counterculture(2102). She is the co-editor of the Journal of Modern Craft.
Ruth Lloyd
Ruth Lloyd is Residency Co-ordinator at the V&A Museum, London where she set up and now manages the Museum Residency Programme.
21st Century Residencies
Across the World, there seems to be greater interest in residencies that focus on public engagement and socially engaged creative practice. The Victoria and Albert Museum Residency Programme invites creative practitioners from a wide range of disciplines, including ceramics, to use a studio on site for six months, use the unrivalled collections for research, and engage the public in making through learning and participatory programmes. Since 2008, the V&A has hosted over thirty innovative and original residents who have challenged the museum, enthralled visitors, and who, as individual residents, have grown as artists and created inspirational new work .
What makes a residency successful? What is gained from these programmes – for the public, the host organisation, and the resident?
Jeremiah Krage Empty Bowls: A Charitable Challenge for Potters
Jeremiah is an artist working across a range of media to create interactive objects and experiences in public spaces. Inspired by a desire to help his local ceramics group raise their profile (and membership), and to do a good turn for charity, Jeremiah set out to create a series of ‘Empty Bowls’ events in Cornwall. The Empty Bowls movement is a grassroots effort to tackle hunger, using handmade bowls to serve a simple meal of soup and bread. In return for a donation to charity, diners keep their bowl as a reminder of empty bowls around the world. Jeremiah will be talking about the history of the Empty Bowls movement, the highs and lows of the Cornwall project, and ultimately, how we can all benefit from undertaking a charitable challenge.
Get Involved
Over the years the Festival has built up a reputation for featuring some of the world's best known ceramic artists and potters and 2013 will be no exception.