YORK ceramist Ben Arnup opens the Christmas Collection exhibition at Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, tomorrow at 11am.
On show until January 20 will be new work comprising 24 small and medium pots that feature trompe l’oeil effects with his flattened box forms and a new departure in his style wih vase and beaker forms.
“Collectors of his work will be surprised to hear that an eminent ceramic artist who has built his career on the basis of trying to trick the eye has this year progressed into the realm of vessels that are not compressed to an almost flat form,” says Pyramid Gallery curator and owner Terry Brett.
“But they will also be pleased that nothing in Arnup’s world is regular and that each vessel here in this show succeeds in being slightly eccentric.
“Ben has always experimented with surface decoration, using micro-thin layers of coloured clay to create a marble effect or applying textured coloured slips to differentiate different sides to a cube. The new work incorporates both of these techniques to pleasing effect.”
Pyramid Gallery owner Terry Brett holding ceramics by Ben Arnup. Behind him are paintings by Mick Leach
Arnup’s interest in ceramics started at home. Blessed with a sculptor and a potter as parents, he grew up learning ceramics skills and technology.
Originally trained as a landscape architect, he worked in the industry until 1984 when he returned to making pots, heavily influenced by the design process. Previously working in Ross Moor and with his father near Holtby, he now lives and works in York.
From the beginning of his career as a potter, his pieces were always shallow, with trompe l’oeil illusions. For the first 15 years, his work was high-fired stoneware in an oil reduction kiln; now this fellow of the Craft Potters Association fires to an oxidised stoneware in an electric kiln to achieve cleaner, brighter colours.
“In order to create a colourful fluid field for the trompe l’oeil image I laminate a porcelain veneer onto a stronger clay body,” he says. “The drawn illusion is complemented by the colourful rhythm in the base clay.
Barn, box-form ceramic, by Ben Arnup
“The pots are an exploration of the way we see. The onlooker will be well aware of the frail illusion and the contradiction between what is suggested and what is tangible. I like to play a game: setting the prosaic nature of clay against the unlikely structures of the drawings.”
Arnup will be at Pyramid Gallery between 11 am and 2.30pm tomorrow to greet collectors and explain his making methods and inspirations for the work. Wine and refreshments will be served.
On the walls are paintings by York artist Mick Leach and work by Scottish artists Ian MacIntyre (paintings) and Hilke MacIntyre (ceramic reliefs and linocut prints), while an array of many different types of 3D art is provided by sculptor Jennie McCall, glass maker Catherine Shilling and potters Dylan Bowen and Katie Pruden.
As always, the window and cabinets on the ground floor are filled with hand-made jewellery by more than 50 British jewellery designer/makers.
Gallery opening hours are 10am to 5pm, Monday to Saturday, and 11am to 4.30pm on Sundays. Much of the work can be seen and bought via the gallery website at pyramidgallery.com.
AFTER the Covid-enforced fallow year of 2020, York Open Studios returns this weekend for its 20th parade of the city’s creative talent.
Preceded by Friday’s preview evening, the event will see 145 artists and makers open 95 studios, homes and workplaces on July 10 and 11 and July 17 and 18, from 10am to 5pm.
Among them will be 43 debutants, prompting CharlesHutchPress to highlight six newcomers a day over the week ahead, in map guide order, as York prepares for a showcase of ceramic, collage, digital art, illustration, jewellery, mixed media, painting, print, photography, furniture, sculpture and textiles skills this month.
“My work aims to abstract the modern, decaying landscape with textures and geometric composition,” says Mick Leach
Mick Leach, painting, 3 Thorpe Street, Scarcroft Road, York
AS a self-taught artist and full-time worker, Mick’s side-career in painting has been taking shape steadily since early 2016. “I’m still learning,” he says.
He works mainly with acrylic paint and chalk powder, along with other media, that he applies to MDF board to achieve a layered, industrial aesthetic in his abstract paintings.
Mick Leach: Self-taught abstract artist
He draws inspiration from El Lissitzky, the Russian artist, designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect, and Kazemir Malevich, the pioneering fellow Russian avant-garde artist and art theorist.
“Pursuing my urge to create, my work aims to abstract the modern, decaying landscape with textures and geometric composition,” says Mick, who won the 2019 Art& York Best Raw Talent award.
Look out too for Evie Leach’s jewellery designs in the same house. Both Mick and Evie will take part in the preview evening from 6pm to 9pm.
Ceramicist Pietro Sanna in his studio
Pietro Sanna, ceramics, 44 Dale Street, York
BORN in Sardinia and now working and living in York, Pietro has always been interested in art. During his degree studies in Contemporary 3D Craft at York College, he started to focus on the use of the ceramic medium.
Since graduating, he has taken part in The Kunsthuis Annual Ceramics Show, at the Dutch House, Mill Green Farm, Crayke, and in exhibitions at the Silson Contemporary Gallery, in Harrogate, where he is a gallery artist.
Pietro creates hand-built vessels as carriers for broad types of narratives; his practice taking inspiration from experimentation with clay and the possibilities it offers during the act of making.
Charlotte Dawson: Artist and facilitator
Charlotte Dawson, painting, 44 Dale Street, York
PIETRO’S partner, Charlotte is a vital player in York’s art scene, organising the York River Art Market, by Lendal Bridge, where artists and craftspeople set up stalls on Dame Judi Dench Walk at weekends in the summer months.
In her own work, facilitator Charlotte is a multi-disciplined artist, focusing on abstract painting and jewellery. She began her formal arts education in 1996 at Westwood Art College, Scarborough, later taking a short course at York School of Jewellery in 2010.
“My painting seeks to create a visual language, working intuitively to discover interesting compositions and colours through energetic mark making,” says Charlotte Dawson
After completing an Access course in Art & Design at York College in 2012, she gained a BA Hons in Art & Design Interdisciplinary at Leeds University of Art in 2015.
“My painting seeks to create a visual language, working intuitively to discover interesting compositions and colours through energetic mark making, while my jewellery designs are led by technique and colour to create contemporary and everyday pieces,” says Charlotte.
A ghostly artwork by Caroline Lewis
Caroline Lewis, collage, 24 Hob Moor Terrace, York
LANDSCAPES and ghosts vie for centre stage in Caroline’s artwork.
Scenes of (mainly) Yorkshire inspire the landscapes, depicted in collage, lino print and paint. As for the ghosts, images sparked by Covid-19 and abandoned places are captured in collage, transfer printing and paint.
Caroline Lewis: Ceramicist, jewellery designer, delicatessen owner, gardener, pianist and collage artist
Caroline has a BA Hons in ceramics from West Surrey College of Art and studied on a one-year jewellery course full time at Maidenhead College of Art.
She owned a delicatessen for 30 years until taking early retirement in 2017 to give her more time to take up art again, along with gardening, re-learning the piano, walking and just enjoying life full stop.
David Bowie, portrait, by Lucie Wake. “It’s all about the eyes,” she says, and indeed the eyes have it
Lucie Wake, painting, 15 Slingsby Grove, York
ART runs like a seam through the life of Lucie, who has a BA Hons in Ceramics.
She built up a successful licensing company, Hocus Pocus, her designs adorning many products across most of the high-street stores. In 2005, she ventured into painting, concentrating on portraits, both of people and animals.
Lucie captures the soul of her portrait subjects through her expressive use of delicious slabs of oil paint on canvas. “It’s all about the eyes, they capture your attention,” she says.
Lucie Wake: Portrait artist for people and canines alike
Lucie, who promotes her art via Facet Painting, will be participating in Friday’s preview night from 6pm to 9pm and will be giving demonstrations over the two weekends.
Her work also can be found in the Momentum Summer Show, presented by the York art group Westside Artists at Blossom Street Gallery, by Micklegate Bar, York, until September 26. Gallery opening hours are: Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, 10am to 4pm; Covid safety measures are in place.
Stoneware-fired porcelain sculptural vessels by Pamela Thorby
Pamela Thorby, ceramics, 11 Middlethorpe Grove, York
PAMELA left behind a distinguished career in music as a recorder virtuoso and academic to pursue a new path in fine art.
Her stoneware-fired porcelain sculptural vessels are “imagined but reminiscent of a multiplicity of organic forms”: whether interstellar, fossil, micro-organism or coral.
“I aspire to make work light enough to be hung in the air; strong enough to be placed piece inside piece, creating new possibilities of form and meaning,” says Pamela. “My aim is to translate the dynamism and sensitivity of my former career as a musician into a ‘visual music’ in clay.”
She is “so excited” to have been selected for her first participation in York Open Studios. “This was another one of the goals that I set myself and here we are, in my third year as a ceramicist, and I’m working towards a major body of work for this month’s fantastic event,” she says.
“I aspire to make work light enough to be hung in the air,” says Pamela Thorby
During lockdown, Pamela worked intensively towards a collection of thrown functional stoneware to partner with her sculptural hand-built porcelain forms. “The concentrated discipline of daily wheel practice has provided meditative solace and structure in extraordinary times,” she says.
In her esteemed career in music, Pamela was professor of recorder at the Royal Academy of Music in London until 2019; the regular recorder player for Welsh composer Sir Karl Jenkins’s projects and a member of such groups as La Serenissima, New London Consort and Palladian Ensemble with Baroque violinist Rachel Podger.
In May 2007, she performed a radical fusion of jazz and folk music with Perfect Houseplants at the National Centre for Early Music in York, an innovative experience she described memorably as: “I’m a bit like a gherkin on a salad plate: I’m adding piquancy to the mix.”
She will give demonstrations during the two YOS weekends and will be opening up her home studio for the Friday preview too.
TOMORROW: Mark Druery, Kate Akrill, Lisa Lundqvist, Nick Kobyluch, Lucy McElroy and Liz O’Connell.
YORK Open
Studios 2020, the chance to meet 144 artists at 100 locations over two April
weekends, has been cancelled in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
However,
with doors sadly shut for the April 17 to 19 and April 25 to 26 event,
CharlesHutchPress wants to champion the creativity of York’s artists and
makers, who would have been showcasing their ceramics, collage, digital,
illustration, jewellery, mixed media, painting, print, photography, sculpture
and textiles skills.
Each day,
in brochure order, five artists who now miss out on the exposure of Open
Studios will be given a pen portrait on these pages, because so much art and
craft will have been created for the event and still needs a new home.
Addresses will not be included at this time.
Meanwhile,
York Open Studios artists are finding their own way to respond to the shutdown
by filling their windows with their work instead. Look for #openwindowsyork2020 to locate them.
“If you see one in your area while taking your daily exercise, take a picture
and let us know,” they say.
A textile work by Caroline Utterson
Caroline Utterson, textiles
CAROLINE combines her two great loves, photography and fabric, in creating one-off embroidered, appliquéd and felted artworks influenced as much by her imagination as by the landscape around her.
After graduating from university with a degree in textiles, she
worked for North Yorkshire Police for eight years before travelling to Thailand
to teach English.
On her return, using the tools she had to hand, Caroline taught
herself freehand machine embroidery, a craft she likens to drawing with a
sewing machine.
“The environment is important to me, so I use many recycled fabrics in my work,” says Caroline Utterson
“I’m greatly inspired by animals, nature, my northern roots and my love of travel and photography,” she says. “Forever taking photos of anything that catches my eye, I then convert my pictures into textile artworks, using fabrics, buttons, beads and bits that I have collected over the years. The environment is important to me, so I use many recycled fabrics in my work.”
Caroline launched her It’s Cute textile shop in September 2013. “The name was coined as a result of a happy acronym of my name and what I do: Caroline Utterson Textiles and Embroidery,” she says.
She would have been participating
in York Open Studios for the first time this month. Contact her via itscuteshop@yahoo.com.
Furniture maker Marcus Jacka
Marcus Jacka, wood
MARCUS specialises in
furniture and objects in wood, usually practical, sometimes only for
contemplation.
After many years
studying, teaching and researching in Physics, he has, for the past decade,
been a full-time woodworker.
The common thread is
design and experimentation, in thought, process and materials, as Marcus tries
to achieve a spare lightness in what he creates. For more info, go to
marcusjacka.com.
RUTH’S slab-built pots
explore structure, containment and balance, articulated and enhanced by the
passage of vapours in the final salt-glaze firing.
Trained at Camberwell School of Arts and Craft, she moved to York after four years living and working in London. A leading figure in York’s art world, with books to her name too, she is a member of the York Art Workers Association and a Fellow of the Craft Potters Association.
Ruth KIng in her studio
Unexpected yet hauntingly familiar, Ruth’s distinctive ceramic vessels have been exhibited widely and are represented in the collections of York Art Gallery; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh; Royal Ulster Museum, Belfast; Nottingham Castle Museum and the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent.
Her work is available by commission, through exhibitions, at onlineceramics.com and the Contemporary Ceramics Centre, London. More details can be found at ruthkingceramics.com.
Elaine Hughes: Collages occupying the imaginary, whimsical world of Oh Golly Gosh
Elaine Hughes, collage
ELAINE creates stitched collages using vintage papers and ephemera to depict scenes from an imaginary, whimsical world she calls “Oh Golly Gosh”.
The paper is first coloured and manipulated with a variety of techniques to then illustrate an imaginary patchwork scene.
The text and graphics of old printed papers, along with a love of the character of old buildings and boats, provide inspiration.
“I have a love of the quirky vernacular buildings found in market and seaside towns, as well as ancient cities such as York,” Elaine says. “The charms of bygone eras of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s also play an important part in the aesthetic language of the work.
“Creating patina and pattern”: Elaine Hughes’s collage work
“I use text, fonts and graphics from vintage ephemera, such as old tram tickets, maps and dress-making patterns, to create patina and patterns.”
Elaine, a graduate in embroidery from Manchester Metropolitan University in 2001, has exhibited in galleries across Britain and since launching her Oh Golly Gosh label in 2009, her work has made its way to homes around the world, as well as finding a permanent home in The Written Gallery in York. Take a look at ohgollygosh.co.uk.
Mick Leach’s paintings take inspiration from Russian artists El Lissitzky and Maleyich
Mick Leach, painting
AS a self-taught artist and full-time worker, Mick’s side-career in painting has been taking shape steadily since early 2016.
He works mainly with acrylic paint and chalk powder, along with other media, that he applies to MDF board to achieve a layered, industrial aesthetic in his abstract paintings.
He draws inspiration from El Lissitzky, the Russian artist, designer, photographer, typographer, polemicist and architect, and Kazemir Malevich, the pioneering fellow Russian avant-garde artist and art theorist.
MIck Leach: geometric composition
“My work aims to abstract the modern, decaying landscape with textures and geometric composition,” says Mick, who won the 2019 Art& York Best Raw Talent award.
Last May to July, he took part in Pyramid Gallery’s Abstract Paintings exhibition; this month would have seen his York Open Studios debut. Check out mickleach.art.
TOMORROW: Fiona Kemp; Chris Whittaker; Laura Masheder, Sarah Papps and Henry Steele.
LOTTE Inch Gallery, in Bootham, York, is going online only “for
the time being”.
“While the Covid-19 situation poses a threat to us all, we
want to ensure that everyone stays well and healthy and, as such, have closed the
doors at Fourteen Bootham until we are advised by the Government that we can
re-open,” says Lotte.
“However, just because the doors are closed, it doesn’t mean that you can’t still look at some of the beautiful work that features in our current exhibition, York artist Mick Leach’s Urban Abstraction. All Mick’s paintings are now on our online shop at lotteinch.co.uk, along with Katie Timson’s beautifully delicate ceramics and Evie Leach’s refined silver and semi-precious stone jewellery.”
Running until April 11, Leach’s debut solo show of sophisticated abstract work endeavours to recreate the textures, colours, layers and shapes of York’s decaying urban landscape.
One of Mick Leach’s Urban Abstraction paintings
Working mainly
with acrylics mixed with French chalk powder, Leach applies paint with palette
knives to gain his textured, layered effect. Various colours and media are then
added to enhance the layers and textures to evoke the memory and feeling of the
places that most inspire him.
“As a self-taught artist and full-time worker, Mick’s ‘side-career’ (sic) in painting has been steadily and successfully taking shape since early 2016,” says Lotte. “This new exhibition highlights his striking talent and his sympathetic and considered manipulation of materials.
“His work is never subjective, but
produced instead from memory, in an attempt to recreate the feel of a location
while simultaneously allowing his work to find its own course.”
Inspiration
behind this series, being shown in York for the first time, is drawn from
the many large cities that Leach has visited or lived in, in particular from
the city of York; the place he calls home.
“We look forward to re-opening soon, but in the meantime, we encourage you to browse online,” says Lotte Inch Gallery curator Lotte Inch
“In this
new body of paintings, Mick attempts to recreate the colours and feel of the
ancient stonework, the dark alleyways, sunken windows, and the contrast of the
modern world against this ancient city, a place rich with contradictions,” says
Lotte.
Coming
next will be Lotte Inch Gallery’s first online-only exhibition, Tom Wood’s The
Abstract Crow, running from 10am on April 17 to May 16.
“Keep an
eye out for more details coming soon and follow Lotte Inch Gallery on Instagram
for sneak previews of the new works that Tom will be including in his show,”
says Lotte.
“This will be a solo show of new paintings by this internationally recognised and technically brilliant Yorkshire artist. Known for his imaginative and allusive abstract approach to painting, Tom will pay homage to his love for the natural world in The Abstract Crow.”
One of Tom Wood’s paintings for The Abstract Crow, his upcoming online-only exhibition at Lotte Inch Gallery, Bootham, York
Since graduating from Sheffield School of Art in 1978, Wood
has exhibited his work worldwide. For example, his celebrated portraits of
Professor Lord Robert Winston and Leeds playwright Alan Bennett, both
commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery, London, have been on display at
the Australian National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.
Wood has held solo shows at the Yale Center for British Art, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA,
and Schloss Cappenberg, Kreiss Unna, Germany. Among his commissions are
portraits for the National Trust, Warwick University and the Harewood Trust, for
whom his large double portrait of the late 7th Earl and Countess of
Harewood is on permanent display at Harewood House, near Leeds.
“We look forward to re-opening soon, but in the meantime, we
encourage you to browse online,” says Lotte. “Do note that if you live in the
York area, we are pleased to be able to offer a free and safe delivery service.
Just select ‘Collect In Store’ and we’ll be in touch to arrange delivery of
your items.
“Take care of yourselves and your loved ones,” she signs off.
