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Words about my ceramic work

I make hand-built, wall-based ceramic works.  

 

Planets, moons and meteorites... Their battered or smooth, scratched and stained, inlaid and exploded shapes and surfaces result from unseen interior actions, and unstoppable exterior energies. The shapes are coiled, punctured, pushed, bombarded and encrusted.  They are chemical portraits too - of oxides, silica, carbonates...

 

Speech and thought bubbles...In graphic novels the speech bubble is the almost invisible link between the image and narrative. I make these in ceramic with a mute but dangerous form, with a spike. Their darkness and occasional turbulence, with flashes of red and white comes from my love of deceptively simple Jacobean imagery and literature.

 

Test Dummys...I very rarely make tests for surfaces and glazes, preferring to encourage disaster and unknown consequences. These small forms are based on baby dummy and bottle teats, and are often tests for trying out new processes. I am building their numbers to make a wall-full.

 

A note on my relationship to pottery - my wall-based ceramic sculpture side-steps the studio vessel tradition, though I find its aesthetic tradition and development compelling, and avoids plinth based sculpture. Yet the necessary hollow interior, for successful drying and firing, and it's relationship to the surface are present as part of the meaning of the objects I make. I try to harness the energy of the unseen inside, and it's interaction  with the sculptural surface and outside of the form.

CV

 JANE MILLAR

Studio:                    ACME Studios, East Place, West Norwood.

 

EDUCATION:

2008 - 2012: UCL IoE MA, Education in Museum and Galleries

1987 - 1989: Royal College of Art, MA Painting

1984 – 1987: Canterbury College of Art, BA Hons Fine Art

1983 - 1984: Cardiff College of Art, Foundation Course

 

PRESENT POSITION:

Current studio practice is in London at ACME Studios, West Norwood. Recent shows include selected show The Discerning Eye 2017 at the Mall Galleries, Small Worlds, PS Mirabel, the Creekside Open 2017 selected by Alison Wilding and Conway Actants, a site-specific project at Conway Hall,  with sculptor Deborah Gardner.

 

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS:

2018:               'Space Shift', APT Gallery, Deptford. Curated by Sarah Kogan and Rachel                                    Warriner

2017:              The Discerning Eye 2017, Mall Galleries, London

2017:              Creekside Open 2017, selected by Alison Wilding

                       'Small Worlds', selected for PS Mirabel, Manchester, part of Manifest

2016:              'Design & Architecture', Studio 73, Brixton

                        'Unnatural Histories', SPH gallery, Chatham, Kent

2015:              'Conway Actants', residency and site-responsive project at Conway Hall,                                        London, with sculptor Deborah Gardner. ACE funded.

2013:             'The Curious Exchange', Dulwich Festival 2013, commissioned for Dulwich                                    Festival.

2012-13:        Curious, a site-specific art trail at West Norwood Cemetery, artist and curator.

                       'The Pilgrimage Project', Wilton’s Music Hall. Curated by Sophie Herxheimer.

                       'The Hanky Show', London Printworks Trust.

                       Two –person show, with Jane Ward, Studio 73, Brixton, London.

2009:              An Tobar, Mull, with the LAND2 group.

2008:              So Near So Far, five artists, APT Gallery, London.

2007:              Peer Esteem, Five Years, Hackney, London

2007:              So Near So Far, Ebersberg Kunstverein, Ebersberg,   

                       Germany.

2006:             The Technology of Enchantment, Menier Gallery,

                      London.

2006:             Particular Places, Toni Heath Gallery, London. Solo show.

 

2005:              LAND2, Beyond Landscape, RWA, Bristol.

2004:              LAND2, Beyond Landscape, Dean Clough Galleries, Halifax.

                      BRIXTON ARTISTS: 198 Gallery, Railton Rd, Herne Hill.

1992 - 2003:   Represented in solo and group shows by England & Co, London.

                      Artbridge 2003, Sheridan Russell Gallery, London.

2000:              The Freud Museum, London. Launch of FOLD : The     

                      Newspaper of the Unconscious.

                      291 Gallery, London. Launch of customized editions of  FOLD.

1998:             Ground, Catalyst Arts, Belfast.

1995:            DAD, Gasworks, Vauxhall’ London.

 

CURATORIAL WORK

 November 2013 to July 2014:  Associate Research Curatorship, with ACE strategic funding, for A Fine Line, with Jeremy Theophilus; researching and developing an exhibition of contemporary crafts in Southend.  

Curious: Two site-specific art trails at West Norwood Cemetery, in 2012 and 2013.

Involving 26 artists, working in different media; each artist interpreting a burial or other aspect of the cemetery. A Grand Picnic for the Common Dead was held as part of Curious 2013. Curious was funded by the Mayor’s Outer London Boroughs Fund.

November 2013: Curious Books, a curated selling show, at Studio 73, Brixton, SW2, 4th to 10th

 May 2013: The Curious Exchange, commissioned by Southwark Council for the Dulwich Festival. The Curious Exchange was designed to involve local creative communities in exchanging work without money, finding an audience and public platform, and networking; as well as engaging in ideas around value, generosity and reciprocity.

January 2000:  FOLD: The Newspaper of the Unconscious, 30 artists collaborated to produce an artist's newspaper. FOLD was launched at the Freud Museum and the 291 Gallery, Hackney in 2000, sold from major gallery and art bookshops throughout London, and the Tate Modern.