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."

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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

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 2019 Wall based ceramics

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