Jane Millar Artist's Statement

Chamber  2026 Temporary studio wall-based installation. Eco emulsion (olive stone), ceramic. Installation dimensions 250 x 210 cms

I make hand built wall-based clay and ceramic sculptures, occasionally shown together with wall paintings. These express speculative future narratives about relationships between a human, and more-than-human environment. What drives my work is a fascination with the possibilities of clay to become something other, to deal with the familiar in all its strangeness, so I use a very wide variety of ceramic techniques, clays and glazes to achieve this. My research in early humans and human species throws up questions about purpose and belief, about how environmental change shapes our making, and how made objects can apparently shift from practical uses to imaginal or magical purposes. My sculptures involve a visual repurposing; fitting together recovered objects to unsettle meanings, and to embody objects of debatable, possibly liminal use and purpose, in a future workshop where there are no instructions. They evoke such everyday things as shower heads, knives, spiders, bricks, moons, hooks, brushes, tools, bulbs, mirrors and vases, I often make separate and different elements which are assembled after firing. I regard these objects as existing in a place-in-progress, a travelling case, a future storehouse, or lock-up, or even a 'larder' of things. I think about what I make in terms of a future archaeology so imagining futures and making new realities is, for me, a creative strategy for hope and survival.

Everything I make with clay and ceramic, starts with the idea of energy within the unseen interior of a ceramic object, and its actions on a surface. The work explores a territory between ideas of what is natural and unnatural. Recent works in both ceramic, wall painting and peripatetic containers for objects to travel, deal with un-locatable resemblances, stories, repetitions, echoes and memory; between material culture, body, extra-terrestrial and earth.

Jane Millar 2026

Teaching Case (reconfigured) 2021 50 x 30 x 10 cms. Ceramic, foam, museum board.

The Whole World in Our Hands

'Lock-up' Jane Millar 2025

Wall-based ceramic sculptures and wall paintings, 2025. Mixed ceramic media and olve stone paint

'The Whole World in Our Hands'

Alison Cooke | Julia Ellen Lancaster | Sam Lucas | Rosanna Martin | Jane Millar | Jacqui Ramrayka

Curated by Julia Ellen Lancaster

'The Whole world in Our Hands' unites six UK-based women artists who use clay as a medium to reveal, rupture, resist, and reconnect. Clay holds deep historical, cultural and economc significance - embedded layersof time, environment, and society. Across a spectrum of highly crafted artefacts to seemingly utilitarian objects these artists explore clay's transformative power, challenging notions of value, examining personal narratives, myths and historical events, and the ongoing extraction of natural resources.

Through their work these artists create a dialogue between deep time, present touch, and future imagination, shaping new narratives through this ancient medium.'

Follow the link to read an interview with the artists, with Vasi Hirdo in Ceramics Now magazine:

https://www.ceramicsnow.org/articles/the-whole-world-in-our-hands-at-the-stephen-lawrence-gallery/

A snippet of my dialogue with Vasi:

Q/ What message or feeling do you hope viewers take away when experiencing your work in the context of Earth Overshoot Day?

A/ I read, watch and listen to everything I can about early humans, and particularly, early hominin species. The only surviving hominids today, though not necessarily the most successful, are Homo Sapiens – us – due to a creative revelation within our brains and bodies as a consequence of ancient climate change and human nomadism. In other words, our extraordinary creativity and adaptability are something that has got us into the current mess! Donna Haraway’s term (and title of her book) is ‘staying with the trouble’. For me, this suggests persistence and curiosity about the living world. It’s also about adapting materials and technologies in both a new and old way to protect the world and the survival of life in it. It is also, over everything else, about cultivating and practicing tenderness for the world.

New Doggerland Part Two Thameside gallery

new doggerland : future imaginings of place, ecologies and culture

Thames-side Studios Gallery

Curated by Jane Millar

Exhibiting artists:  Fran Burden | Clare Burnett | Alison Cooke | Richard Ducker | Elaborate Kingdom | Deborah Gardner | Oona Grimes | Sula Hancock | Nicky Hodge | Melanie King | Sarah Kogan | Jo Lawrence | Jane Millar | Stephen Nelson | Freddie Robins | Sarah Sparkes | Virginia Verran  

'In a sense, if you're not getting it wrong really a lot when you're creating imaginary futures, then you're just not doing it enough. You're not creating enough imaginary futures.'  William Gibson

For a full set of installation images click on the link below

https://www.thames-sidestudios.co.uk/news/exhibitions/thames-side-studios-gallery-new-doggerland-1-16-february-2020

Jane Millar Test Beds and Embryos 2019 Wall based ceramics. Variable dimensions between 18 and 8 cms.

Jane Millar 2019-20 Test beds and embryos, detail. Wall-based ceramic. Variable dimensions between 18 and 8 cms

Jane Millar Teaching Case 2019-20 Foam,packing fleece, ceramic. 72 x 50 x 10 cm

Between The Floor And The Wall

Exhibiting artists: Eleanor Bedlow | Johanna Bolton | Jenny Camp | Janet Currier | Sandra Lane | Jonathan McCree | Jane Millar |

Between the Floor and the Wall presents the work of seven artists whose work oscillates between the flat and the fat; the horizontal and the vertical. Their diverse artistic outputs share an excitement about playing with spaces and meaning throughout the zone between the floor and the wall, bringing energy and humour to this project at Thames-Side Studios Gallery. The exhibition includes works made with diverse, experimental and sustainable approaches to textiles, sculpture, ceramics and found materials.

'I made wall paintings as a holding narrative places for new wall-based ceramic sculptures. I regard these objects as existing in a place-in-progress, a future storehouse, or lock-up, or even a larder of things. I think about what I make in terms of a future archaeology so imagining futures and making new realities is, for me, a creative strategy for hope and survival.' Jane Millar 2025

Exhibition images here: https://thames-sidestudios.co.uk/news/exhibitions/2025/between-the-floor-and-the-wall

'Shadders'

Shadders - An exhibition of work by eleven artists, connecting with Russell Hoban’s novel Riddley Walker. Curated by Jane Millar

An exhibition at Project 78, 78 Norman Rd, St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, TN38 0EJ

Opening event: Saturday 18th January, 6.30 – 9pm

Closing event: A book discussion on Saturday 1st February at 3pm

Exhibition dates: 19th January to 1st February 2025

Gallery opening hours: Wednesday to Saturday 11.00 – 17.00

Exhibiting artists: Andrew Ekins | Feral Practice | Jane Millar | Sara Trillo | Sinéid Codd | Marianne Walker | Sarah Sparkes | Julia Ellen Lancaster | Peter Hofer | Kim L Pace | Lex Shute

Shadders are the white nuclear shadows in the speculative future world of Russell Hoban's 1982 novel Riddley Walker.

Shadders, in the context of the work made by the artists coming together for this exhibition, are human traces of a forgotten event, representing a traumatic loss of environment, relationships, technologies and meaning. Buried memory and objects are disinterred to create new meanings, new translations, figures and mythology; a search for reconnection. This exhibition is not a direct interpretation of the book, but draws together artists whose work is connected with its place, mystery and materiality.

Follow the link below to hear a conversation with the curator of Shadders, Jane Millar. A discussion between Project 78 Gallery director Patrick Jones and Jane Millar about the exhibition, Russell Hoban's novel Riddley Walker, and imagining futures, among other things:

https://soundcloud.com/user-954377303-98157073/250130_0097jm

Exhibition images

Leeds University Material Sciences Cabinets

I have made two new ceramic sculptures for this fascinating display in the Material Sciences department display cabinets, at the University of Leeds

What Is This Thing Called Materials Research?

Curated by Deborah Gardner

It considers the way artists, designers and scientists approach working with materials.

The object I have specifically made for this cabinet is a ceramic sculpture. It is designed to act as a display of a range of different clays, glazes and minerals. The style of the object is slightly different from my usual practice in that, in its structure and shape, it references C18th and C19th museum displays and mineral collection cabinets made by miners from the north of England in the C19th.  It is inevitably about landscape and pre-history, including organic materials and humans.

The materials and objects I have mimicked are a flint hand axe shape made from black and white porcelain; a chalky land and skull, using a reactive lava-type glaze; a porous spongy element is glazed with a celadon made from wood ash; and an organic woody thorny growth, glazed with Tenmoku glaze which gains it’s colour from iron oxide. I have used a range of stoneware clays, in red, white, grey and black; laminating these to make the viewfinder circle. Ultimately ceramic materials and processes endlessly adapt and evolve the effects of air, water and heat on clay: a material which itself is a product of the continual erosion of the Earth’s mantle.

July 2023

"Wuthering Heights" Commission

A selection of my ceramic sculptures have been bought and commissioned, by set decorator Charlotte Dirickx, for the immersive, symbolic sets for Emerald Fennell's film "Wuthering Heights" 2026. They appear in 'Cathy's Room' and the main parlour in the Gothic Wuthering Heights house sets. For more images visit my post on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/DVWpmbACHRq/?img_index=1

Hand Axe on Cathy's bed

Scrying Mirror on Cathy's desk

My ceramic sculpture Lure can be glimpsed against the 'Death Painting' frieze, in the parlour at Wuthering Heights

Spider in Cathy's bedroom

Paint Thing

'The Incidentals', Bell House 2025

Jane Millar and Sarah Sparkes curate the Landing and the Gowan Room for The Incidentals, at Bell House, Dulwich Festival 2025

'In our rooms artists' products gather to form heaps on the floor, or thrown on to hooks. The works are waiting, to be worn, to be used, gathered or sorted. In these rooms no artworks are presented as final or fixed, there are no frames or plinths. In this way the curators present artworks in a state of liminality, of flux, and therefore as having agency and personhood.'

Artists: Rebekah Dean | Helen Barff | Sandra Lane | Poppy Whatmore | Alison Cooke | Vanya Balog | Robert Rivers | Simon Leahy-Clark | Paul Cole | Sarah Sparkes | Roland Hicks | John Bunker | Jane Millar | Belinda Worsley | Carrie Stanley | Chris Marshall | Karen David | Campbell McConnell | Helen Turner | Kate Squires | Lady Lucy

(a contemporary) Phantasmagoria 2

(a contemporary) Phantasmagoria is curated by John Bunker.

'We might understand the word 'Phantasmagoria' as conjuring up the magic lantern shows of darkened C18th drawing rooms, or, in it's more recent incarnation, as Walter Benjamin's term for the fractured, kaleidoscopic nature of the experience of modernity. This show looks to enlarge the scope of Benjamin's definition, the better to take the measure of our fragmentary, collagic, screen-mediated contemporary reality.' 

Clinging On

I will be showing 'Caught Moon', a ceramic wall-based sculpture, in Clinging On, at Glassyard Studios. The exhibition is curated by Poppy Whatmore, Hermione Allsop and Erika Trotzig. Artists' talk - chaired by Paul Carey-Kent on Saturday March 22nd at 4pm. 

'Soft Verge' at They Come They Sit They Go / Finch Cafe

I curated an exhibition at the wonderful They Come They Sit They Go space and the Finch Cafe Gallery. 'Soft Verge' - fourteen artists show work with an open edge.

John Bunker | Fran Burden | Janet Currier | Karen David | Andrew Ekins | Roland Hicks | Nicky Hodge | Sandra Lane | Yair Meshoulam | Jane Millar | Matthew Richardson | Robert Rivers | Sarah Sparkes | Belinda Worsley

Lost and Found, Blyth Gallery

I am really delighted to be showing my work alongside a fantastic group of artists:

Jeremy Bubb | Andrew Ekins | Peter Lamb | Dave Farnham | George Melling | Jane Millar | Laurence Noga | Joel Tomlin | Joby Williamson

'My work manifests un-locatable resemblances and repetitions of shape. Coastal ecosystems, redundant museum displays, the jumbled material culture of the Cardiff Arcades in the 1970’s are some sources - it all takes place in that every day and night space between our inner selves and the world as perceived beyond our body’s edge. I repurpose remnants of objects and mythologies, into new objects of debatable, possibly liminal, use and purpose, in a workshop where there are no instructions. I think and read about early humans and lost human species, their societies, and their presence as ghosts in our DNA, and our inheritance as shapers of materials'. Jane Millar, for Lost & Found, Blyth Gallery 2025

Exhibition images

.

Jane Millar 

'All That Glitters' Ubicua Gallery

A selection of recent work is showing 'All That Glitters' at Ubicua Gallery, Charlotte St, London curated by Belinda Worsley. The exhibition opens 28th November, 2024.

'The Tipping Point', Bell House, Dulwich Festival 2024

Jane Millar and Sarah Sparkes curate their second project at Bell House, for the Dulwich Festival, 2024. Artist kim Thornton has invited curators to work in different spaces in the historic Bell House, Dulwich Village.

Octavia Butler’s dystopian novel, ‘Parable of the Sower’, opens in 2024, when capitalism, wealth inequalities, repressive regimes and climate disintegration have led to a rapid and violent breakdown of society. The novel’s protagonist, 15 year old Lauren Oya Olamina, creates a new belief system – Earthseed - where the only lasting truth is change, and where all the seeds of life, may be transplanted and adapted to new situations and locations, ultimately, beyond Earth.

We are all entangled - humans, animals, plants, fungi, earth, water, fire, air – yet it seems that the human condition is to wait for tipping points, transformative catastrophes to precipitate urgent change and then, only as a means of return to an illusionary status quo.
Our artists explore a new awareness of change and exchange, a constant shifting of strange identities, the malleability of being, interspecies communication and the strength and vulnerability of community. We are imagining new ways to merge; to intelligently and sensually live in the flux of a perpetual tipping point.

Sarah Sparkes & Jane Millar

‘The tipping point can arrive seemingly out of the blue. It does not have to be the result of a spectacular event but is perhaps a slight change in the equilibrium that marks a new inclination, a new way forward. Or more dramatically it can literally be the last straw, a small but significant change leading to an irreversible future. This exhibition examines different kinds of tipping points, both minor and major, all leading to some kind of transformation. Themes explored include human behaviour, climate, metamorphoses and defining moments. The boundaries may be blurred and hard to recognise or individual and diverse. This multi-disciplinary approach will investigate different ideas of what is a tipping point and whether it is always bad.’

Kim Thornton

The Miniatures Challenge

This tiny piece will be in the Miniatures Challenge, selected exhibition in Canal Boat Contemporary. At various locations along canals, in 2024.

'The Dreaming' Women in Art Open

I have this piece selected for the Women In Art Gallery, Open Call 2023

The Dreaming, work selected for the Women In Art Gallery Open, Lewes, E Sussex.

'Champs Noir' Terrace Gallery Curated by Simon Leahy-Clark

I am happy to be taking part in this exhibition at the Terrace Gallery, curated by Simon Leahy-Clark

'It's Coming From Inside' at Bell House 2023

External inscrutability, internal passion, domestic confines and dreams of escape...

Bell House, 27 College Rd, Dulwich, London SE21 7BG

Opening Night:  12 May, 6pm to 8pm
Exhibition open: 13/14 and 20/21 May, 11am to 6pm

Sarah Sparkes and Jane Millar have invited 20 artists to exhibit across two rooms, and a hallway, on opposing sides of Bell House: the McAndrew room, a scullery, tucked away off a long corridor lined with coat hooks, and the Lutyens’ room, a light-filled drawing room, close to the elegant front entrance.

In their thinking about the Impressionist Berthe Morisot, and the exhibitions broader theme of Windows and Thresholds, the curators see the two different domestic spaces, and the liminal corridors between them, as places expressive of dialogues in both Morisot’s and their invited artists' works: of confines, dreams of escape, of external inscrutability and internal passion.

The Lutyens' Room becomes a cabinet of entrance and exits, of frames, veils and delicacy; a parlour for a person of leisure; for ornament, miniatures and portraits. The shelves, the mantelpiece and a curved table, act as spaces for mementos and intimacy.

Just outside the McAndrew Room the corridor, with its many coat hooks, is a passage of transformation, for casting off the norms of everyday by putting on garments that consume, creep, and protect.

The McAndrew Room, a scullery, is a warm and informal domestic space where materials shift across themes of food, the body, flesh, plant, clothing, clay.  A wine red fireplace in this space is seen by the curators as a portal for energies that move, along the corridor and antechambers, to the Lutyens' Room, and out, through the windows, to the outside. 

Artists: Fran Burden | Ruth Calland | Helen Carr | Mikey Cuddihy | Janet Currier | Robert Dawson | Andrew Ekins | Liz Elton | Lisa Fielding-Smith | Deborah Gardner | Caroline Gregory | Birgitta Hosea | Mindy Lee | Wayne Lucas | Julia Maddison | Jane Millar | Darren O’Brien | Kim Pace | Sarah Sparkes | Geraldine Swayne

Clay in Conversation at Somerset House 16-09-22

Clay in Conversation - Body      Sept 16th 2022

Hosted by Makerversity at Somerset House. Supported by Potclays

I was delighted to be invited by ceramicist Julia Lancaster to take part in her curated series of conversations between artists. I and my fellow participant Kim Pace gave presentations on our individual practice, and then we took questions from the audience. The conversation was chaired by Tessa Peters.

Clay in Conversation 2: Body is the second in a series of curated conversations, presenting artists working with clay and ceramics

The curated conversations provide a platform for presentation, dialogue and discovery, bringing together a diverse range of artists with a practice in clay and ceramics.

Each conversation centres on a specific theme - acting as a lens through which the artists will present a single piece of work or project. The conversations offer the opportunity to dig deeper into a single work, exploring it formally, materially and conceptually, from the perspective of the artists themselves. 

For Clay in Conversation Millar will present 'Pacify', one of an ongoing series of installations involving wall painting and ceramic works, commissioned for the exhibition 'In (Matters of Soul'), ASC Gallery, November 2021. While making peculiar 'unlocatable' ceramic objects, usually wall based, Millar puts them into a context of a pedagogical structure, in this case transient wall painted shapes, referencing museum infographics from Natural History displays, which contextualises the slow life of ceramic sculptures.

Kim L Pace’s chosen works are from her solo show ‘Kindred’, 2022 at Arusha Gallery, Edinburgh. ‘Kindred’ explored kinship, especially entanglements between the human & non-human. Pace’s practice focuses on the creation of ceramic sculpture in installation; describing an increasingly immersive world, populated by uncanny characters.

Hogchester Artists Residency November 2021

Two week sculpture residency, Hogchester Arts, November 2021. Selected by Chantal Powell (director), Clare Burnett (RSS President), and Domo Baal. To see images of my time there please visit: https://www.hogchesterarts.com/janemillar

I spent a wonderful two weeks in residence at Hogchester Arts. I wrote this in reflection on my time there:

"The two week residency gave me the opportunity to do what I know is vital for developing my work -  noticing things. I was able to do this and spend time writing, thinking and making, without the usual distractions. I did have some plans - to further investigate and locate resemblances between things in the world, across scale, metaphor and materials. So I started by going on a hunt for things. A walk and conversation with host artist Chantal and dog Piper on Charmouth beach late afternoon -  Chantal told me stories and anecdotes about the area, the cliffs, the extraordinary Blue Lias clay which dried and formed into different textures after each tide, the treacherous properties of the cliff mudflows and their fossils, Black Ven cliffs dumping Victorian brick and scrap metal on to the beach, local gossip about a new film of Mary Anning's life. Walking east from Charmouth along the cliff top towards Golden Cap I had my first encounter with the beauty of the wildernesses created by the slipped cliffs - Cain's Folly with its micro landscapes of exquisite richness and diversity. I spent time looking around the farm land and surrounding area and found late November fungi such as Golden Spindles, Coral Fungus, a giant parasol mushroom, puffballs and logs covered with clouds of tiny white toadstools. I looked in to the detail of the meadows at Hogchester, with my small sculptures and wall drawings about combing or brushing in mind: the troublesome tendency of humans to classify and separate out tangling plant life. It's been a while since I walked in a strange place at twilight, turning to night, getting a bit lost, getting emotional.

A great part of my time at Hogchester was getting to know fellow resident artist Alice Wilson. Aside from the fact that Alice is brilliant fun to spend time with, it was also so interesting to have those longer conversations about our practice and get to know more about Alice's fascinating expanded work with materials (wood), culture and place, her embedding in place through walking, being alone and feeling things, Edinburgh Rock and headlamp photography. Our walk from Lyme Regis to Seaton, through the famous Undercliff, another almost primeval wilderness, was amazing.  I had brought some favourite books - 'The Perception of Landscape' by ethnographer Tim Ingold being one of them, but I didn't really read this much as it was too familiar, and instead read Anne Carson's 'Nay Rather', brought by Alice, immersed myself in some of 'Dark Ecology' by Timothy Morton, and re-read Cold Comfort Farm with great pleasure, after finding a copy in the second hand bookshop in Lyme Regis that Chantal pointed out. Sharing the beautiful studio at Hogchester, and getting to know Chantal and her lovely work was such a pleasure. It was good to talk all things ceramic and share experiences with different clays and glazes, as well as other materials. The day before the residency had started I had installed work in the show 'In (Matters of the Soul)' at ASC Gallery in South London, where I had combined info graphic type images painted directly on to the wall, with wall based ceramic sculptures. At Hogchester I started to make paper-based work developing these images as well as making beginnings with more clay work, using a new red stoneware, as well as photographing and notes. My time at Hogchester is processing through current work, and will be influencing what I am doing for quite some time."

​

In (Matters of the Soul)

In (Matters of the Soul) is a group show of 7 artists based in London at ASC Gallery.

Artists: Stephen Nelson | Jane Millar | Olly Fathers | James Tailor | Stephen Palmer | John Bunker | Lex Shute

Curated by Darren O'Brien

'21 grams was the disputed weight of a persons soul as measured in Duncan MacDougal's 1901 experiments on people before and after death. Does artwork have soul? 'In (Matters of the Soul)' is a celebration of material artwork, of artwork that has its own soulful body. Certain work defies classification, playing with its own materiality and the illusion of what it seems to be. Other work plays with the legacy of the previous life represented in its material and the soulful spirit that could lie within.'

Sarah Staton: Supastore Southside, Slingbacks and Sunshine

https://www.southlondongallery.org/exhibitions/sarah-staton-supastore-southside-slingbacks-sunshine/

Artist and curator Sarah Staton selected six of my ceramic pieces and three scrap sculptures for her latest installation of the iconic Supastore at The South London Gallery. The show ran from 9th July to 5th September 2021

SupaStore is an event-based durational artwork by the artist Sarah Staton. A trading platform for artworks, editions and multiples, works by emerging and well-known artists are presented in an ever-changing display. Hosted intermittently by galleries, museums, and independent art spaces across the world, SupaStore returned to London for the first time since 1994. 

SELECTED ARTISTS

Felicitas Aga, Francesca Anfossi, Simon Bill, Shane Bradford/Assembly Line, Chila Kumari Singh Burman, Ben Cain/Assembly Line, Merlin Carpenter, Peter Culley, Denise de Cordova, Declined & Deceased (Alejandro Villa Duran, Ariel Helyes and Kim Jakobsen To), Arnaud Desjardin, D.N.A, Mila Dolman, Leo Fitzmaurice, Hiromi Fukikoshi RC, Coco Fukuhara, RIP Germain, Susie Green, Oona Grimes, Johanna Magdalena Guggenberger, Natalie Price Hafslund, Hamilton & Verhoeven, Phillipa Horan, Deming Huang, Steph Huang, Ffian Jones, Paul Kindersley, Eve Lam, Jas Lasode, Tanya Ling, David Lisbon, LITMIS, Camille Løw, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Jane Millar, Claire Mouton & Marie-Sophie Robert, Flore Mycek, Claes Oldenburg, Janette Parris, Zoë Pencils, Simon Popper, Tom Railton, Cullinan Richards, Giles Round, Karin Ruggaber, Yinka Shonibare, Dani Smith, Sarah Staton, ADAM the Strand, Body Odor Studios, Katarina Sylvan, Sam Tahmassebi, Jake Tilson, Joel Tomlin, Gavin Turk, Demelza Watts, Camille Yvert, Abbas Zahedi

'Can We Ever Know the Meaning of These Objects?

A group exhibition exploring the relationship between made objects and found artefacts - curated by Kevin Quigley & Sarah Sparkes

GALLERY 46, 46 Ashfield Street, Whitechapel, London E1 2AJ
www.gallery46.co.uk  

8th - 22nd July 2021

Artists: Associated  Clay Workers Union ( Helen Carr, Sarah Christie, Duncan Hooson and Annette Welch, Diane Eagles, Alison Cooke, Danuta Solowiej, Stephanie Buttle, Jo Pearl, Raewyn Harrison, Jane Millar), Eleanor Bowen, Sean Dower, Fieldnotes, Bruce Gilchrist, Caroline Gregory, Bjørn Hatleskog, Luke Jordan, Miyuki Kasahara, Yev Kazannik, Marq Kearey, Calum F Kerr, Lisa McKendrick, Pol Mclernon, Sean Mclusky, Kevin Quigley, Victoria Rance, James Roseveare,  Martin Sexton, Sarah Sparkes, Ian Thompson, Inga Tillere , Marianne Walker, Phill Wilson-Perkin, Mary Yacoob

Sarah Sparkes invited the Associated Clay Workers Union to create an installation and text for the exhibition.

Unearthed

The Associated Clay Workers Union

The objects in this installation will, one day in the future, be excavated from somewhere. Their place of discovery may be as sherds from a geological layer of catastrophically displaced topsoil, as newspaper wrapped objects lifted out of a crate, as recovered relics from a ring of space junk. Ceramics endure to become archaeological evidence; soft materials and their memories decay into obscurity.  Making ceramic objects counters a future cultural amnesia (forgetting), and contemporary ceramicists are creating objects with an ancient technology for a future layer of plastics and metals in a strata of the anthropocene. The Clay Worker’s installation comments on an archival impulse to make aspects of our lives, our past and present relationship to place, to archaeology, technologies and society last. The members of ACWU make and fire clay objects for diverse contemporary purposes - as art works, as archaeological investigation, as social commentary, as a communal and therapeutic activity and, perhaps, less as functional ware. How will our made objects be understood then?

www.acwu.co.uk

Pretty Ugly

PRETTY UGLY

Curated by Andrew Ekins.

This exhibition brings together the work of 16 artists all of whom explore a fugitive beauty within “a degraded sense of reality"(2) . Each sees value in the imperfect and the irregular, the pull of the sublime and the illicit. Theirs is an aesthetic that gains potency by being elusive, abject, and impolite, while testing the capacity of what has been made to represent the content it is intended to have. The resulting forms manifest a flawed but compelling beauty, and are distinguished by a delight in a logic of brokenness: surfaces that have a corrupted ornamentation and an abused touch of the brush.

These artists make delinquent un-palettable paintings, ceramics that relish the quiddities & quirks of form, and sculpture that emphasizes the substance and materiality of thingness. The work of each employs an expanded creative language, exploring a narrative of otherness in pursuit of the lure of a tainted kind of love, a fatal attraction.

To see more images of the exhibition installation go to https://www.thames-sidestudios.co.uk/news/exhibitions/thames-side-studios-gallery-pretty-ugly-2021

Pending San Mei Gallery, Brixton

Pending  

San Mei Gallery Winter Fundraiser    1 December 2020 - 31 January 2021

Showing online and in the gallery window

Guston's Brush 2020  Ceramic

A Personal Perspective A choice of work by Liz May at APT

Liz May : A Personal Perspective
An exhibition of artworks chosen by Liz May to celebrate 18 years at APT : 2002 to 2020
5 to 8 November 2020

Peter Anderson  |  Charming Baker  |  Cuillin Bantock  |  Dominic Beattie  |  John Butterworth  |  Gill Capewell  |  Eileen Cooper  RA  |  Tori Day  |  Bea Denton  |  Sarah Durham  |  Fred Gatley  |  Tricia Gillman  |  Oona Grimes  |  Clyde Hopkins  |  Kabir Hussain  |  Matthew Krishanu  |  Simon Leahy-Clark  |  Maggie Learmonth  |  Sara Lee  |  Wayne Lucas  |  Enzo Marra  |  Liz May  |  John McLean  |  Jane Millar  |  Lisa Milroy  RA  |  Barbara Nicholls  |  Jayne Parker  |  Kasper Pincis  |  Joanna Sands  |  Patrick Semple  |  Keir Smith  |  Chris Sowe  |  Christine Stark  |  David Theobald  |  Alaena Turner  |  Annie Turner  |  Claire Undy  |  Jacqueline Utley  |  Virginia Verran  |  Ben Woodeson  |  Maike Zimmermann

Fuzzy Objects San Mei Gallery

Fuzzy Objects
Janet Currier | Nicky Hodge | Jane Millar

12 - 29 March 2020

Extended: 1 - 5 July

Fuzzy Objects is a moment in an ongoing conversation between Janet Currier, Nicky Hodge and Jane Millar. An installation of paintings, ceramics and soft sculpture, Fuzzy Objects evolves from rolling studio visits with the artists bringing their latest works together, creating new assemblages, seeing what comes to the surface and disbanding to make more work; the threads of their findings then weaving back into the next round of making.

Although their interests and approaches are diverse, the artists share a preoccupation with exploring a kind of transitional zone – the space between things – where objects are coming into being or in a state of flux, shifting from one form into another. In all the work there is a focus on the edges: of the canvas, paper and glazed clay, and a constant re-examination of where things start and finish. There is a picking away at the surfaces and skin that form the boundary between the inside and outside, the public and private, the self and the world. These surfaces are often disrupted by leaking drips of paint, fuzzy brush marks, punctured with holes or by dissonant forms that seem to erupt out of the flatness of wall or paper.

The works are arranged and selected in response to the gallery space creating new correspondences between the three artists’ works. Resisting a traditional narrative structure the works cannot be read like a story. The installation plays with the allusive and contingent power of the works, allowing meaning to change and transmute through the different combinations, opening up a dialogue with each other and the viewer.

When Fuzzy Objects reopened for five days on July 1st - 5th the writer Roxy Walsh had responded to the exhibition with a publication Amitie. To read this click here: https://www.sanmeigallery.co.uk/s/Amitie_Roxy_Walsh.pdf

Creekside Open 2019 Selected by Brian Griffiths

Sculptor Brian Griffiths selected my piece Crush and Fold for the Creekside Open 2019 (part one)

SLOW LIFE at Coffee is My Cup of Tea, Hackney

Slow Life  Curated by Richard Ducker

1st Nov – 5th Jan, 2020

A solo show of ceramic works by Jane Millar

Coffeeismycupoftea Space

Hackney, London E8 1NH

New Doggerland Lumen Gallery London

new doggerland : future imaginings of place and culture

Lumen Crypt Gallery: 200 Cambridge Heath Rd, London E2 9PA  

30th May to 9th June

Exhibiting artists: Frances Burden |Deborah Gardner |Jane Millar | Sarah Sparkes

'In a sense, if you're not getting it wrong really a lot when you're creating imaginary futures, then you're just not doing it enough. You're not creating enough imaginary futures.'  William Gibson

New Doggerland is a new multi-disciplinary artists project for a future imagining of physical and cultural re-connection between Britain and the European mainland. Doggerland is the name given to the ancient landmass, now submerged, that once connected Britain to Northern Europe. What if a new land mass rises up and we become physically part of the mainland again?

 New Doggerland is a project about future land and humans. It asks questions to which the exhibitors and participants will respond with different ideas and answers. Who will be living there and how? It may evoke a Ballardian dystopia, or ideas of possible Utopia. Or could New Doggerland be the heterotopia where we go to experience 'other' selves, a place of becoming? 

'Ceramic artist Jane Millar envisions a future crisis of lost knowledge. Her Orrery attempts a narration of origins and contingencies, while a Werkbund type traveller's display case of wave forms triggers unrecovered memories and soothes future human survivors' feelings of loss.'

Teaching Case  Jane Millar 2019  Fired ceramics, wood, blanket, foam and plastic

 Orrery  Jane Millar 2018 - 2020  Fired                                                                                              ceramic and movable steel structure

Space Shift APT Gallery Curated by Sarah Kogan

Space Shift      Curated by Sarah Kogan

Guest art critic: Richard Dyer

APT Gallery, Creekside

19 October – 4 November 2018      Private view 18 October 6–9pm

Wendy Anderson | Neel Bakhle | Jeremy Bubb | Maria Chevska | Richard Dyer | Adam Gray |

Sarah Kogan | Enzo Marra | Jane Millar | Galen Riley | Susan Sluglett | Rachel Warriner

The structure of APT Gallery lends itself to an interrelated reading of the works, in that as we move through the three spaces, views of work sited in diagonal aspect to each are glimpsed through the architectural space and lead us towards an unfolding combination of image, object or screen. The gallery itself is presented as a single artwork with interconnecting elements placed within it. The aim is that this may direct the gaze of the viewer to new horizons and interiors or shift them into an aerial and psychological free fall.

At the invitation of artist and curator Sarah Kogan, I created the installation Grip for Space Shift, APT Gallery, 2018: 

'Grip used the gallery space to create an installation of ceramic foot or hand 'holds' which were installed to the full interior height of the gallery. Climbing walls in indoor sports centres work our bodies upwards through strength and stamina, they offer no natural vista.  Installed in a white cube space, the holds that made up Grip scaled the walls, reaching beams, with ladders or scaffolding, alluded to and questioned artistic aspiration, even privilege which a position of height can assume. The footholds presented approximations and mockeries of natural forms, with the seduction and longing; materiality and fragility of ceramics.'

'Ghost Tide' Curated by Monika Bobinska and Sarah Sparkes, Thameside gallery, Woolwich

The Ghost Tide, curated by Monika Bobinska and Sarah Sparkes

Exhibition Dates: 20 October-3 November 2018
Preview: Friday 19 October 2018, 6.30-8.30pm with Gen Doy performance 7.30pm
Curators' Talk: Saturday 20 October 3-4pm
Day of the Dead Closing Party: Saturday 3 November 2-7.30pm

The Ghost Tide - coinciding with the festivals of Hallowe'en, All Souls and the Day of the Dead - takes as its starting point the perspective that ghosts exist as an idea, or as part of a belief system, across cultures, across national borders and throughout recorded history. Most languages contain words to describe the ghost, spirit or immaterial part of a deceased person. Often, these words - like the type of ghost they describe - have traversed borders and been assimilated across cultures.

The exhibition, situated next to the Thames Barrier in South-East London, evokes ghosts as a migratory tide, washed up along the shore of the Thames their historical baggage in tow. It also explores the presence of artists in this part of London, as a migratory tide of creative fotsam and jetsam which ebbs and fows as the city gentrifes and develops. Featured works include sculpture, installation, flm, sound, performance and wall based works. The exhibition will include installations and outdoor interventions, as well as public events.

The Ghost Tide features works by over 30 UK and international artists. Artists featured: Andrea G Artz, Chris Boyd, Davies, Monaghan & Klein, Gen Doy, Sarah Doyle, Graham Dunning, Diane Eagles, Andrew Ekins, Charlie Fox, Katie Goodwin, Kio Griffth, Miyuki Kasahara, Calum F Kerr, Rob La Frenais, David Leapman, Liane Lang, Toby MacLennan, Laura Marker, Joanna McCormick, Josie McCoy, Jane Millar, Output Arts, Miroslav Pomichal, Brothers Quay, Anne Robinson, Edwin Rostron, Matt Rowe, Sarah Sparkes, Charlotte Squire, Sara Trillo, Yun Ting Tsai, Kate Walters, Patrick White, Heidi Wigmore, Neale Willis, Mary Yacoob, Neda Zarfsaz.

Much of my work is concerned with the presence of a spirit or energy within the unseen interior of a ceramic object. I am a ghost story addict since childhood and still occasionally terrified of the dark. Ghosts may be parts of ourselves, cast out in fear, that then inhabit a space or object, and then haunts us back. A thread in my ongoing ceramic pieces explores the notion that a ghost haunts us so, that it is trapped within an object, and revered, or feared and abandoned. I am experimenting with ceramic mirror glazes to conjure a dark reflection, or vision, of another within. Dr Dee's spirit mirror in the British Museum, a scrying mirror made from polished obsidian, and the Pitt Rivers collection of pre-silvered mirrors are objects of reverence. But I want the pieces I am making to be a future imagining of mirrored objects as ghost vessels: washed up, captured and transformed into objects of transference and power, functioning as carriers of trapped selves or ancestors, as a potency to be consulted and placated.

Jane Millar Ghost Tide 2018

'Cosmic Perspectives' Lumen Group Open, Ugly Duck, Bermondsey 2018

My piece Orrery was also selected for the Lumen Group Open Cosmic Perspectives, at The Ugly Duck exhibition space, Bermondsey, London.

Creekside Open 2017

My ceramic installation Four Planets was selected by Alison Wilding for the Creekside Open 2017.

40 Celsius The ASC Open 2018 Selected by Tabish Khan

My piece Orrery was selected by art critic Tabish Khan for 40 Celsius, the ASC Open 2018, at the Grafton Quarter exhibition space, Croydon.

Votive The Associated Union of Clay Workers Thames Festival 2018

Jane Millar – London Infants
"The small clay objects I have made as an offering to the River Thames represent the multitude of infants born in London, and their reliance on human care, past, present and future. I have made a series of clay and ceramic feeding-bottle teats inspired by the throwaway modern silicone ones, as well as the older versions, some of which can be seen in the Wellcome Trust collection. These were made from less forgiving materials; from glass and tin, as well as ceramic.
In Dicken's novel Great Expectations, the apparently cold-hearted lawyer Jaggers describes the abandoned street children of London as 'so much flotsam', evoking a tragic tide of unwanted infants washed up on the river bank. However, visiting the Foundling Museum, the small tokens that mothers left with the children there reminds us of each unique child and their potential, and the love that may go with them. Each piece I have made is an attachment made, then broken, either naturally or traumatically, between parent and child. In offering the unfired clay dummies as votives to the Thames, I send a wish for the care, nourishment and protection of London's children and their families."

Jane Millar  Votive Dummies 2018 Unfired clay Approx 7cm height

VOTIVE

A project exhibition at Southwark Cathedral for the Thames Festival from the 1st to the 30th September 2018

A performance of gifting was made on the Thames foreshore at 12.15 pm at low tide. Gifters: Duncan Hooson and Stephanie Buttle  

‘Votive’ is a ceramic exhibition and public performance, engaging visitors with the river Thames' ancient importance as a place of offering and hope. It will link the river with the spiritual significance and place of Southwark Cathedral and its historical association, by location, to the river Thames, through the making, offering and dissolving of clay votive objects.'

The Associate Clay Workers Union (ACWU) are a group of artists who work on site responsive projects. ACWU, alongside students from Morley College ceramics department, produced work around the theme of votive offerings, which was displayed in the cabinets in Southwark Cathedral, in the Lancelot link space, from 1- 29th Sept.

The final day, Sunday 30th Sept, was a public performative event, when the artists took the unfired ceramic votive objects from the exhibition down to the Thames foreshore, at the Bankside Pier Ferry terminal. Visitors were invited to join the artists on the beach at low tide, to witness the clay votive objects being offered to the river. 

The act of offering precious hand-made objects as Votives into a river is known in many cultures and throughout history from early Neolithic times. The Museum of London has a display of votive objects - finely cut and carved spear and axe heads - that were placed in the Thames. Water is seen as life giving and curative, it has a liminal capacity, connecting one realm with another. Votive offerings may be for commemoration and remembrance, linked to death and departure, they can also be for cleansing and disposal, a ritual act to engender change and hope for the future. Votives are often given in dedication or as a consequence of a vow, a performance undertaken in uncertain times and in thanks for subsequent relief.

Visitors to the exhibition and performance were encouraged to personally engage and reflect upon their own experiences of ritual and belief, with their own wishes for change and their relationship to the Thames in this ‘liquid hope’: an act with the power to bring us all together for change.

More In Common

APT Gallery, Creekside  2018   

Deborah Gardner | Jane Millar | Harriet Tarlo | Judith Tucker | Louise K. Wilson | Paul Wilson

Curated by Deborah Gardner

More in Common presents diverse work from site responsive projects around the U.K. including audio-visual work, assemblage, painting, photography, poetry, sculpture and typography from Cumbria, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and London. 

"More in Common considers a new post Brexit national landscape, questioning communal and societal belonging and identity and what might be a divided, tumultuous political geography. This exhibition proposes to bring together four related projects all of which directly address these issues through the creative arts. These projects are ongoing or very recently undertaken. Geographically they span much of the UK, from Cumbria to Yorkshire, from Lincolnshire to London. They all engage with those voices that are less heard. They all respond to political and cultural places and spaces, and between them consider systems of language and communication. This stimulated multivalent considerations on societal spaces, aspirations and how behaviours might co/operate now. These distinctive places, under investigation were reconfigured in the gallery, so becoming a productive space for new dialogues and meanings to emerge. The exhibition included audio-visual work, assemblage, painting, photography, sculpture and typography.
Gardner and Millar exhibited work from their site responsive project Conway Actants at Conway Hall, Holborn. Conway Hall is one of the oldest international societies for freethinking with a rich history of radical thinking, social political activism and currently claims one of its main visions is for radical ideas to inspire social and community improvement. More in Common exhibited an assemblage of manipulated photographs of leading figures from Conway Hall’s history alongside images, assemblages and sculpture which explore spaces and structures propagated by human and non-human agency and which point to collective endeavour." Deborah Gardner 2018

'Either Side'  shown in More in Common Jane Millar 2015 Acrylic, pastel and seed beads on Tyvek 125x125 cm

Discerning Eye 2017

I am delighted that two of my ceramic sculptures 'Dark Meteor' and 'Unexploded' have been selected for The Discerning Eye exhibition, opening in The Mall Galleries, London on 15th November.

Small Worlds in MANIFEST

Planet 7 was selected by Manchester gallery PS Mirabel for their wonderful show Small Worlds. This was part of the Manifest arts festival across Manchester in the summer 2017