A Natural Selection

Mary Bourne is a sculptor based in the rural North East of Scotland. She trained at Edinburgh College of Art where she received both a BA (hons) and Postgraduate degree in sculpture, before teaching at Edinburgh College of Art and Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen.

The majority of Bourne’s work is carved from natural stone or polished slate. Her work is about man’s relationship with the environment and the idea of the passage of time is recurrent in her work. Medium is, arguably, the most vital element. She treats the material in different ways depending on what she is trying to convey. Human intervention, influenced by, and altering, natural processes. She explains that each technique helps her to find subtle physical forms for her poetic ideas.

Mary Bourne has been recognised with several prizes and awards including the Highland Visual Artist Award 2017, Hope Scott Trust Award 2016 and the Royal Scottish Academy: Highland Society of London Award 2013. She has received numerous public commissions, serves on various arts organisation committees and boards, and in 2012 was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy. In 1999 Mary received a commission to produce public work at the Scottish Poetry Library at Riddle’s Court. She created the Carpet of Leaves – oak leaves in the flagstones surrounding a lectern in the Library’s open-air performance space. In Inverness Bourne was commissioned to make sculptural seating, and inlay pavement flags and the flood wall with lines of Ken Cockburn poems. She has also been commissioned to produce unique works in Banff, Cumbria, Livingston and Dundee.

Public collections include: Aberdeenshire Council, Highland Council, East Lothian Council, North Ayrshire Council, North Lanarkshire Council, Moray Council, Perth and Kinross Council, Barrow Borough Council, West Lothian Council, The Norton Priory Museum in Cheshire, City of Sunderland, Nanao City Japan, Victoria Hospice in Kirkaldy, Mugdock Country Park, Riddles Court, Edinburgh Moray Council, Macmillan Cancer Care, Stobhill Hospital Wards Art Collection.

Mary’s work featured in Impressions In Stone in February 2022 and A Natural Selection in May 2019 

Hitomi Hosono’s exquisitely delicate and detailed sculptures began when she sculpted a simple leaf from the garden and found herself drawn into its intricacy.

Hitomi Hosono’s ceramics are rooted in both Japanese and European traditions. Hitomi studied Kutani Pottery at Kanazawa College of Art, Japan from 1998-2002, before studying Ceramic Product Design at Danmarks Designskole, Copenhagen, Denmark from 2005-2006. She then completed an MA in Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art, London from 2007-2009. Hitomi Hosono has exhibited both nationally and internationally and received the 2014 Jerwood Makers Open Prize, Jerwood Visual Arts, London and the Perrier-Jouët Arts Salon Prize, London in 2013. Hitomi is now based in London and is represented by Adrian Sassoon, London.

Public collections include: Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums; Oriental Museum, Durham University; The British Museum, London; The Wedgwood Museum, Stoke-on-Trent; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Musée national des arts asiatiques – Guimet, Paris, France; Porzellanikon – Staatliches Museum für Porzellan, Selb, Germany; Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York, USA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA

Hitomi’s work was featured in A Natural Selection, May 2019 and also featured in A Japanese Design, 30 July – 29 August 2020.

Belgian ceramicist and artist Françoise Joris graduated with qualifications in pottery and sculptural ceramics. For more than 20 years, Françoise has been working in pottery whilst also refining her skills with porcelain. She uses the Nerikomi technique (creating patterns with coloured clay) to create her visions of nature. The addition of paper pulp and textile fibres give the porcelain more body and great flexibility, and cooking the porcelain keeps the whiteness, whilst also giving it remarkable translucency.She then shapes and assembles fine porcelain ribbons in delicate shades to obtain light and ethereal structures.

‘Everything started when I was a child. At that time, I was living with my parents in Zaiire (Democratic Republic of the Congo). I loved to take laterite (red clay, top soil) in my hands and knead it to give it form. For me, contact with clay and porcelain is a primordial experience. I started working clay more than 20 years ago. Over time refining my expertise and looking for more finesse, I turned to porcelain. Each new experience is an opportunity to express my vision of nature. The addition of paper pulp and textile fibers gives the porcelain more body and greater flexibility. Baking the ceramics in an electric oven at 1250 ° keeps the whiteness of the porcelain while giving it a remarkable translucency.’

Françoise has received numerous awards including: The Hainaut Arts and Crafts Award 2016, first prize at the Biennial of the Ceramic 2010, Andenne, Belgium; Laure Verijdt Prize 2010, Royal Academy of Belgium, Brussels; WCC Europe Award for Contemporary Crafts 2010, Arts & Crafts Eunique, Karlsruhe, Germany; Rheinisches Museum Landesmusuem Competition for Craft and Design 2009, Trier, Germany.

Françoise’s work was featured in A Natural Selection, 1st May – 29th May 2019 – which can be viewed here.

Takuya Kamiyama was born in Tochigi, Japan. In 2017 he graduated from Musashino Art University, in Tokyo. Takuya studied traditional craft and metalwork under Hiroshi Suzuki and worked for a time as a Metal Departmental Assistant. He has recently graduated from Bishopsland in the UK and has recently been working with silversmith Ndidi Ekubia in Manchester.

“My style is inspired by the natural world, from observing very closely the surface qualities and textures in nature, experimenting with them and then translating them into my work, often using hand raising, punching and chasing. Aesthetics are a priority for me, but I always keep functionality in mind, and mix old and new techniques – my influences are more contemporary but I have great respect for the historic, too. I have been inspired by Hiroshi Suzuki, an influential contemporary silversmith, who I’ve been lucky enough to work under, learning raising techniques. I graduated from Musashino Art University in Tokyo, and worked for a time as a Metal Department Assistant. I came to the UK to study with Bishopsland Education Trust to further my silversmithing skills.”

Takuya Kamiyama won the Goldsmiths’ Company Bursary Award 2017, London.

Takuya’s work was featured in A Natural Selection, May 2019 and also featured in A Japanese Design, 30 July – 29 August 2020.

Theresa Nguyen is a designer-silversmith who is fascinated by the process of transforming an ordinary sheet of silver into a lifelike, sculptural form. Nguyen, a graduate of the Birmingham City School of Jewellery and the post-graduate workshop at Bishoplands Educational Trust, designs and creates nature inspired silver at her studio in Birmingham’s famous Jewellery Quarter. She is internationally known for her ability to fashion metals into works of exquisite beauty, craftsmanship and design. Theresa created her first commission, a silver cocktail shaker set, as a result of winning the national Young Designer Silversmith Award in 2005 when she was only 19. Theresa has received numerous awards including 2013 The Eisteddfod Gold medal award for Craft and Design in 2013, The Lewton-Brain Foldforming Award in 2012 and the Gold Award for silversmithing, Goldsmiths’ Craftsmanship & Design Council Awards 2009.

Meticulous attention to detail at every stage of the process and traditional silversmithing techniques are at the heart of Theresa’s work. She uses the fold-forming technique to convey organic forms and sensuous surfaces.

‘As an artist silversmith, I simply love the creative process of designing and making an object for the first time. My desire is that a finished piece should feel like a beautifully composed piece of music, able to be spiritually uplifting, emotionally stirring, inspiring and beautiful. I feel motivated by a sense of wonder about the world around me and my hope is that I will be able to draw from the incredible magic of creation and be able to somehow capture a little of its essence in my work. Silver has the ability to capture many different emotions, always challenging and extending the boundaries of my creativity. I seek to make pieces in which I hope to convey a sense of organic form, incorporating sensuous surfaces, creative movement and flow.’

Public collections include: National Museum of Wales, Cardiff; The Clothworkers’ Company, New College, Oxford; The Pearson Collection; The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, Modern Silver Collection, London; Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

Based in London, Katie Spragg completed her BA(hons) in 3D Materials Practice at Brighton University in 2010 before completing and an MA Ceramics & Glass at the Royal College of Art, London in 2016.

Combining clay with a range of processes including animation, illustration and installation, Katie Spragg creates work that aims to arouse curiosity. Whether through sharing a story or conjuring a collective memory, her practice highlights the forgotten sources of joy and amusement that surround us. Her latest body of work combines ceramic objects, installation and moving image to create momentary experiences that allude to the amazement and wonder of being outside in nature. The pieces offer the viewer a space to daydream; evoking distant, possibly half-imagined memories. The contrasting situations presented play on the conflict between our sublime fantasy of nature and the often more mundane reality of our experience of it. While the fired ceramic pieces capture a moment in time, the animations describe the dynamic, receptive qualities that clay and grass share. They record the durational element of making and the elastic sense of time that is felt when in nature.

Katie tutors at the Royal College of Art, is a founding member of Collective Matter; an outreach group who pioneer collaborative practice through clay, and has developed a Clay for Dementia programme with the Garden Museum, London. Katie has won numerous awards including: the Charlotte Fraser Award and the The Grocers’ Company Bursary awarded at the Royal College of Art, London. She has exhibited, held residencies and taught ceramics at institutions both nationally and internationally including: South Korea, Denmark and Germany. Katie has completed commissions for the British Ceramics Biennale and Sotheby’s. Her work has been exhibited by the Craft Council in London and Miami, included in the British Council’s touring Film Festival and presented at solo shows at Blackwell, Arts and Crafts House, Cumbria and the Garden Museum, London

Public collections include: Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Worshipful Company of Tin Makers Alias Wire Workers; Museum of London

Katie’s work was featured in A Natural Selection, 1st May – 29th May 2019 – which can be viewed here.

Born in the tiny village of Arita, the home of Imari porcelain in Japan, ceramic artist Kaori Tatebayashi
graduated with a BA(hons) and an MA in ceramics from Kyoto City University in Japan. During her degrees, she studied abroad at both the Royal College of Art, London as well as Kolding Design School of Art, Denmark.

While studying ceramics in Kyoto and London, I explored what new possibilities clay could have and what this familiar material meant to myself. Its paradoxical nature fascinated me, simultaneously having a sense of fragility and permanence. Whatever you make with soft and malleable clay, the firing will result in irreversible changes. Clay will end its organic life, and what remains after the firing is like a lifeless ‘shell’. It becomes strong and durable, but at the same time it can be destroyed in an instant. This fragility always reminds me of nature’s cycle. Fired ceramic resembles ghosts, losing their organic life in the firing. It becomes a metaphor for memory, traces of the past and a connection between the past and the present. Using its spectral appearance and paradoxical character, I aim to capture time and preserve it within clay. In recent years, my love of nature, plants and gardening has increasingly influenced my work. I capture and preserve the fleeting moments of the life cycle of plants through modelling by hand. By stopping the clock and also removing original colour, ordinary objects become something extraordinary to look at and will resemble a ghostly apparition.

Kaori has received awards from the Crafts Council and was commissioned to create tableware for the British Museum’s Grenville Room in 2009.

Kaori’s work was featured in A Natural Selection, 1st May – 29th May 2019 – which can be viewed here.

Peter Ting grew up in Hong Kong, where he fell in love with the porcelain ornaments he saw in his uncle’s ‘hundred-treasure case’ (the display was rotated seasonally like a museum, with blue-and-white bowls in spring and darker, sang de beouf glazed pieces in autumn and winter)

“.…at the age of 8, I remember being totally fascinated by the fragile looking items sitting on a traditional Chinese Bai Bao Ge display shelf. Only much later did I understand that what I saw so many years ago was a connoisseur curating his collection and displaying it in an installation format.”

This is how Ting recalls his seminal moment after being introduced to his uncle’s porcelain collection. Since then the artist and designer, who was educated in England, has spent his life working with and specialising in ceramics, from ancient China to classical Greece and believes in ‘looking forward with a foot in the past’. Eastern and Western influences are a continuous thread in Ting’s work, from his focus on tea – the leaves may be grown in China but the practice of taking tea has been built in to British afternoons for centuries – to his tableware, which he makes from Chinese porcelain but sells in very English establishments such as Liberty and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. His interest in Blanc-de-Chine led him to visit Dehua in 2004. In 2016, Ting and writer Ying Jian established Ting-Ying Gallery dedicated to presenting unique and limited edition works in Blanc-de-Chine porcelain from Dehua, Fujian Province, China. Since its inception Ting-Ying Gallery has expanded and now represents a wider group of artists whose cultural references and expression of form are increasingly diverse. However all still retain, as a starting point, the shared history and legacy of Blanc-de-Chine porcelain. Ting’s Blanc-de-Chine collection has been exhibited worldwide at various design fairs, including Design Milan and Design Miami/Basel. M+ Museum in Hong Kong has collected Ting’s work retrospectively and it will be a key part of their ceramics collection when the Museum opens in 2020/2021. M+ Museum is the new museum for visual culture in Hong Kong, as part of West Kowloon Cultural District, focusing on 20th and 21st Century art, design, architecture and moving image.

Public collections include: The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The British Museum, London; National Museums Northern Ireland, Belfast; M+ Museum, Hong Kong.

Peter’s work was displayed in The Gallery in the October 2020 exhibition Blanc de Chine.