Trace, an exhibition by Thrown Contemporary and collaborators, was set in the beautiful glass houses at Omved Gardens in Highgate London, during Chelsea Fringe Festival. The sun beaming down lit the space brightly, with vegetative flowering, by sustainable floral design studio Meta Fleur, adorning it’s plinths, hanging from struts, and intertwining between art pieces throughout. Alongside a host of events, including supper evenings, pot making, and fermentation workshops among others, 12 distinctive art collections came together. From natural ink painting’s to exceptionally blown glass, Thrown’s main discipline is presenting ceramic works and exhibiting pottery from upcoming and established ceramicists and potters.
Barcelona based Roger Coll’s curvaceous tubular ceramic sculptures appeared throughout with different brightly coloured matt and gloss surfaces, and use various hand-builidng, mould making and slip casting techniques. John Mackenzie’s traditional wood fired wheel thrown pots, with ash glazes, are fired in his own built anagama style wood firing kiln. His pieces followed him to Stoke on Trent’s Clay College Stoke, for a teaching workshop, a college originally set up by Kevin Millward and Lisa Hammond. Our own Sam Andrew’s sculptural nerikomi pots featured prominently and was the first time he presented work on this scale. All his pieces were made in studio in 7 Limes Pottery’s kilns. Made from years old waste material of nerikomi batches, where clay slabs are meticulously layered, compressed, sliced and pressed, the waste of which is joined together and manipulated to form large belied and highly patterned forms. Sam’s work combines hybrid pottery making methods of press-moulding, slabbing, coiling and throwing to achieve the sculptural pots and surfaces.
See Trace’s exhibition catalogue below for a more in-depth read about the exhibition and it’s artists.
Featured image credit Will Hearle.