Jill Fanshawe Kato,ceramic artist
Posted on September 10, 2007 - Filed Under Statement, Article, Artists & Potters |
Jill Fanshawe KatoÂ
Email:
jillsetsuokato@onetel.com
Address:
58 Beechfield Road
London
N4 1PE
 
  
 
Forthcoming Exhibitions and Events:
Yew Tree Gallery near St Ives, Cornwall - 2007
- Coming Soon -
Aberystwyth Art Centre, solo - 2007
- Coming Soon -
Teaching at Combe Farm Studios, Devon - 2007
- Coming Soon -
Brief Description of Work:
Jills ceramics are inspired by travel and nature and sometimes by ancient buildings returning to nature.  Making processes include coiling, slabbing, sculpting, throwing and altering.  Fired to 1270ºc in gas reduction.  Some raku also made.  Work ranges from pottery for Japanese cuisine to large sculptural commissions.
Commissioned Work Includes:
- Ceramic bird mural by Yokohama National University, Japan
- Sculpture for Industrial Bank of Japan, London
- Pottery by Neiman Marcus Department Store, USA and Seibu Department Store, Tokyo
- Sculptures for Directors office, LTC Bank International, London
- Seven vases for new Hilton Hotel, Mauritius
- Architectural tiles for Asada House, Tokyo
Selected Previous Exhibitions:
- 2008 Keio Department Store, Tokyo, solo
- 2007 Aberystwyth Arts Centre, solo
- 2007 Yew Tree Gallery, ‘Uprising’
- 2007 Teaching at Coombe Farm Studios, Devon
- 2007 Residency & teaching at Nature in Art, Glos
- 2007 New Ashgate Gallery, solo
- 2006 Keio Department Store, Tokyo, solo
- 2006 ‘Collect’ V & A Museum
- 2006 Beaux Arts, Bath, solo
- 2006 ‘Pichets Extraordinaires’, Terra Viva, France
- 2005 ‘Collect’, V & A Museum
- 2005 Kamukura Kogei Gallery, Japan
- 2005 Gallery St Ives, Tokyo
- 2005 Medici Gallery, Cork Street, London
- 2005 Green Gallery, New Zealand
- 2005 Haddenham Gallery, Ely, with Peter Cavaciuti
- 2005 Broadway Modern, Cotswolds
- 2005 Cecilia Colman Gallery, London
- 2005 Scottish Gallery, ‘Garden and Birds’
- 2005 Rufford Ceramic Centre, Nottingham
- 2004 Scottish Gallery ‘Plates’
- 2004 Â ’Collect’ at V&A Museum
- 2004 Affordable Art Fair, London
- 2004 Celf Gallery, Wales, ‘Jugs’
- 2004 Garden Door Gallery, London, solo
- 2004 Crafts at Kenwood, London, English Heritage
- 2004 Joanna Bird ‘The Spirit of the Maker’
- 2004 Beaux Arts, Bath, solo
- 2004 Nature in Art, Glos., residency
- 2004 Yew Tree Gallery, Penzance, solo ‘Wild and Free’
- 2004 Woodbury studio Gallery, ‘Garden of Delights’, Nature in Art
- 2003 Keio Department Store, Tokyo, 8th solo exhibition at Keio
- 2003 Gaku Gallery, Tokyo, solo show
- 2003 Medici Gallery, London
- 2003 V&A Museum, London, Crafts Council Shop
- 2003 Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
- 2003 Nature in Art, Glos, Art Residency
- 2003 Coombe Gallery, Devon. Â Exhibition with painter Gerry Dudgeon
- 2003 Body and Form at Joanna Bird
- 2003 Lecture, Japan Society Southern Counties
- 2003 Beaux Arts, Bath
- 2003 Yufuku Gallery, Tokyo
- 2003 Art Salon Kogen, Nagoya
- 2002 Â Beaux Arts Bath, solo exhibition
- 2002 Â Taurus Crafts, Gloucestershire. Â Arts residency workshops.
- 2002 Â New Ashgate Gallery, Surrey
- 2002 Â Gendai Igirisu Togei Sakkaten, Maruei, Nagoya, Japan
- 2001 Â Daiwa Foundation, London, Part of Japan 2001 Festival
- 2001 Â Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Wales
- 2001 Â Selected for World Ceramic Exposition 2001, Korea
- 2001 Â Residency at Arapahoe Community College, Colorado, USA
- 2001 Â Browse and Darby, London
- 2000 Â Kunsthuis, Belgium
- 2000 Â Beaux Arts, Bath
- 2000 Â Rufford Craft Centre, Nottingham
- 1999 Â Contemporary British Ceramics, Bandol, France
- 1999 Â Seventh Solo Show, Keio Department Store, Tokyo, Shows supported by the British Council and Japan Airlines
- 1999 Â Participant, Exhibitor in International Ceramics Workshop, Central Academy of Arts, Beijing, China (London Arts Board Support)
- 1998 Â Chelsea Crafts Fair, London (Regular Exhibitor)
- 1997 Â Ryubo Department Store Gallery, Okinawa
- 1996 Â Daiwa Foundation, London
- 1996 Â New Ashgate Gallery, Farnham
- 1996 Â Primavera at Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
- 1995 Â Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
- 1995 Â Terra Viva, France
- 1994 Â Studio Ceramics 94, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
- 1994 Â Vallauris Biennale, France
- 1992 Â Crafts Council Shops at Islington and Victoria and Albert Museum
- 1991 Â Featured in BBC TVs Japanese Language and People
- 1991 Â Joint Show with Itaka, Japan Festival at Liberty, London
- 1990 Â Exhibition with Yosei Itaka, Ginza Matsuya, Tokyo
- 1990 Â Living Earths Rainforest Exhibition, Natural History Museum, London
Stockists/Galleries:
- Beaux Arts, Bath
- New Ashgate Gallery, Farnham
- Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh
- Coombe Gallery, Devon
- At Home by prior arrangement only St Davids Hall, Cardiff
- Gallery St Ives, Tokyo
- Keio Department Store, Tokyo
Artist’s Statement:
Born in Nottingham, England, Jills early interest in the natural world was awakened at the age of ten, when her family moved to the small country village of Kingskerswell near Torquay in Devon. Â She cared for numerous injured or orphaned wild birds brought to her by local people and had a tame jackdaw which stayed for 3 years before returning to the wild, thus started her lifelong interest in nature, which can be seen in her ceramic work.
Travel in Asian countries, Brazil and to coral reefs is another inspiration and tropical birds, exotic fish, animals and plants are used as decoration for her pottery, as well as abstract motifs.
Jill graduated from Chelsea School of Art in Painting followed by Art Teachers Training College and teaching in a school. Â Later she went to Japan where she studied pottery at the school of Yosei Itaka and at Musoan Karatsu Pottery School in Tokyo for five years.
Resident in North London, Jill established her studio and gas kiln with a grant from the Crafts Council. Â She produces functional pottery for Japanese and Western use and creates sculptural and architectural ceramics. Â Her work, which is mainly hand built but also thrown, is fired in a reduction atmosphere. Â She also makes raku pottery occasionally.
Jill was a lecturer on the Postgraduate Ceramics Diploma course at Goldsmith College for 17 years and she lectures widely on Japanese and British ceramics. Â She is currently teaching at Kingsway College, London.
She has had many exhibitions in Japan, generally in Tokyo and once in Okinawa. Â She has also exhibited in France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, the USA, China and Korea as well as regularly in Britain. Â Her work is in public and private collections internationally.
Nature and Travel:
It is unlikely that I would have become a potter if I had not been to Japan. Â Soon after graduating in Painting from Chelsea School of Art in London, I had an opportunity to visit Tokyo.
A Japanese civil servant friend called Mr Murayama invited me out for a meal. Â The Tokyo underground arcade was full of restaurants. Â In each window was a display of enticing plastic food samples from which to choose the real thing inside. Â Mr Murayama dashed hither and thither for some time, comparing window displays, till he narrowed it down to two restaurants. Â Finally, his eyes lit up. Â This is the one with the best pottery. Â We will eat here! he declared happily. Â Both food and pottery were marvelous.
Sushi shops were a joy. Â Instead of the imagined slabs of cold grey fish, a skilful chef handmade sushi in shades of crimson, orange, yellow and silver placed on a simple wooden board. Â Even the yunomi for tea had a fishing net painted on it. Â Eventually I graduated to restaurants with real Shoji Hamada plates hanging on the walls, where the food was served on plates by Bernard Leach and other famous potters.
The artistic preparation of food and infinite variety of pottery serving dishes must have entered my subconscious for on my return to London I began to study pottery. Â In London I met my husband, the Japanese photo-journalist Setsuo Kato. Â Eventually we went back to Japan, where I joined the school of Yosei Itaka, wood-firing potter.
Born into a family of potters, Yosei Itaka not only taught his students how to make pots but introduced them to the history and profound philosophies of the Way of Clay. Â We students helped with the anagama, chopping wood and stoking the kiln day and night during the five-day firings. Â Before lighting the first wood, Itaka would scatter salt and sake over the kiln and offer a prayer for a good firing to the kamior spirit of the kiln. Â For the potter working only with clay and fire, this might help assuage the unpredictable forces of nature.
I visited many of Japans pottery villages. Â There are over one hundred and some are extremely ancient. Â Kilns are passed down from generation to generation and potters follow ancient rhythms of life. Â From widely varying local clays, potters have developed distinctive styles of work, such as the tea wares of Bizen, daily use wares of Onta or the porcelains of Arita.
Alongside traditional potters work ceramists taking the art to the very limits of contemporary thought. Â One of these, Ryoji Koie from Tokoname, challenges traditional concepts by firing clay pillars half in and half out of the kiln, so that they will disintegrate in the rain when erected. Â In his Return to Earth series, he has filled moulds cast from his own face with powder clay, blown away to the point of disintegration before firing. Â One feels the fiery volcanic character of the Japanese islands in his work.
Since establishing my studio and gas kiln in London in 1977, I have had 23 exhibitions in Japan. Â This has enabled me to keep contact with potters such as Itaka and Koie and the ceramic world of Japan, which is a constant inspiration and catalyst to my life as a potter.
Training and Experience:
- Chelsea School of Art (Painting)
- Art Teachers Diploma (Brighton)
- School of Yosei Itaka (Tokyo Ceramics)
Other Activities:
- London Potters Member
- RSPB Member
Further Reading or Information:
Having studied painting at Chelsea College of Art, and trained as a potter in Japan, Jill Fanshawe Kato has realised that it is the three dimensionality of ceramics which she finds even more exciting than she does painting; for in addition to bowls, jugs and platters, she creates ceramic sculptures ranging from large, commissioned wall-pieces to smaller sized works. Â Thus, form is a constant preoccupation and her pots are not merely a clay canvas waiting to accept the painters skill. Â Although there are still times when the painterly intuition asserts itself and colour becomes the initial inspirational force, it is true to say that from precedes colour and decoration in the conceptual hierarchy of her imagination.
Among the smaller sculptural works there is a group of raku-fired seed pods whose naturalistic provenance is felt in their organic forms.  The most provocative member of the series is a heart-shaped pod, with a lustrous, dark blue, thorned stalk.  Fanshawe Kato has created an artifact whose representational features co-exist with an altogether different quality, and, when combined, these elements are capable of inspiring wholly unexpected images while we seek to find out where to place it.  Self-enquiry is invariable part of this process, so that one asks oneself Why do I understand it by thinking in terms of a reliquary clutched by a doomed headstrong beauty in a Jacobean drama€  Or the velvet-spotted veil lying in the fin de siecle boudoir of a Baudelairean courtesan€  Both images  inspired by ideas of the luscious, the theatrical and the sinister  confirm the powerful consortship, within the realm of the imagination, of simultaneous attraction and disconcertedness.
The heart is covered with raised black dots against a gloriously milky glaze, a suffusion of palest pink and quiet silverness.  Here Fanshawe Kato is at her most intriguing, for the form and the differently textured surfaces are seductively tactile and the juxtaposition of colours  the dark blue of the stalk beside the pink and black pod-heart  is striking.  The connotations it bears are rich and allusive, its presence gratifies and disturbs; it is a beautiful, difficult, passionate object.
In many of Jill Fanshawe Katos ceramic works, important decorative elements are placed within a clearly demarcated area.  This is a space which is, on occasion, staked out by being a different colour, in other cases  especially when this specialarea is glazed a slightly chalky white with gently mottling, it contracts with the surrounding unglazed clay.  More recently the whites used for this canvashave taken on a glowing, moisterlook.  However, it remains a magic circle, whose separateness is clearly indicated by colour, texture and incision.  The artist is marking out a hallowed space which also serves as a focusing point for the viewers eye, and simultaneously affects our perception of the outline of the object.
Birds and fish are important impetuses to Fanshawe Katos creativity, for she has a passion for plant and animal life and a dedicated commitment to conservation issues. Â The lighthearted mood of the polka-dotted lids crowing one of her coffee pots undergoes a change when we examine the pair of gyptian Birds it bears. Â Their upright, penguin posture disconcertingly intimates that beneath the bright colours and plumage one might discover a human being, a costumed celebrant who has taken on this form to participate in an arcane ceremony. Â (Oddly and unexpectedly apposite in this context is Edward Burras 1947 watercolour Birdmen and Pots which depicts two of his birdfolkdistinctly human figures wearing beaked masks, people with avain appendages, who stand before a table carrying ceramic vessels).
A sense of lighthearted illogicality might animate both the form and decoration of Fanshawe Katos Crazy Cups recalling workers in pottery factories who, in order to utilize remnants of transfers, would strew the little images on jugs and bowls and in so doing create a form of decoration which often has a casual, quirky charm. Â It is with a similar, seeming randomness that stripes and spots and triangles can occur in Fanshawe Katos work. Â However, the arranging of the pictorial elements is also often achieved with great orderliness, such as the stacked birds which, as in a totem pole, stand one upon the other. Â Parenthetically, these birds are not intended to be accurate descriptions, but one notices how the different angles of their legs hint at reality.
The great variety of handles which Fanshawe Kato creates are emblematic of considered practicality and lighthearted play. Â Little curlicued handles on large vessels, broad, flat ring handles on jugs, handles with upstanding studs, they extend the body of the vessel into the encompassing space and, by being grasped and raised with our fingers and hands influence our understanding of the relationship between shape and volume as it is manifested in the vessel.
Edge of the Reef is not a large bowl and yet it achieves its stature from the largeness of the scene it is evoking. Â The positioning of these forms is, in part, a response to the apparent freedom from artifice with which Aboriginal artists achieve the placement of objects within the frame. Â The darker foreground area bears a pale turquoise handprint, suggesting a viewer peering over the underwater cliff-face into an open predominantly white area, like a bright void, a magical space where a single turtle paddles with detached sang-froid, while a fish, a shell-contained example of ancient sea-life and a third shape caught midways between plant and animal, lie to hand, like objects ready for use in some ritual.
The colours in Fanshawe Katos most recent work are brighter, more Mediterranean, and this is particularly so with the drenched blue used in the interior of a large piece such as Andalucian Shadows whose rim-line is broken by upright, blue, flame-like shapes. Â The eye flows the colour down into the vessel where, covering the entire inner surface, it attains an almost overwhelming Yves Klein-like intensity, its density of impact transforming this internal area into the image of an immense sky. Â This celebration of blue is no mean achievement, but it does not replace, in the affection of many, a special fondness for those pieces where there is plenty of clay showing, for here one senses Fanshawe Katos potterly instincts prevailing. Â These unglazed clay areas, textured like the closely rippled surface of some sandy desert, repay close appreciation for they contrast with the glazed shapes they encircle. Â More importantly, however, they provide the larger, elemental, earth-coloured background upon with Fanshawe Kato inscribes here animist responses to the creatures of the land, air and water which she meets on her travels. Â Her journeys in Brazil are remembered in big-billed toucans and snorkeling in the Maldives brings us the shoals of tropical fish swimming around so many of her pots, while the exuberance of hounds running and hares disporting on a series of serving dishes commemorates early morning sightings in the fields of rural Gloucestershire.
The best work of Fanshawe Kato possesses an atatakai quality  the emotional warmth (the warmth that the pot exudes implies that it is breathing) which the Japanese so prize in ceramics.  We also sense something of the makers spirit in the immediacy  tangibly communicated via our eyes and fingers  with which a lip might be set on a pitcher, a splash of colour applied to a platter or a heart attached to a stalk.  Fanshawe Kato acknowledges and enjoys the fact that happenstance and peoples imaginations often mean that her wares fill roles not intended by their maker, while for the user, there is a domestic delight in discovering how the ever-varying practical capacities which these bowls and jugs serve, continue to reveal more of the nature of these clay works.
Also:
- Ryoji Koie  Human Volcano.  Article by Jill F K Ceramic Review No. 173
- Jill Fanshawe Kato by Ian Wilson. Â Ceramics Monthly US. Â May 1999
- Exhibition Review by Angela Jeffs. Â Japan Times. Â 26.09.1999
- Clay in China. Â Article by Jill F K. Â Ceramic Review No. 185
- Featured in Le Printemps des Potiers catalogue, Bandol, France, 2000
- Domani magazine interview, Japan. Â July 2000
- The Card magazine, Japan. Â Interview January 2001
- Japan 2001 exhibition catalogue, Daiwa Foundation, London
- Aberystwyth Ceramic Series catalogue. Â February 2002
- Featured in book Sources of Inspiration by Carolyn Genders, 2002
- Featured in book Ceramic Surfaces by Jo Connell, 2002
- Article by J.F.K. published in Proceedings, Japan Society, London, 2003
- Featured in catalogue of Coombe Gallery, Devon exhibition, 2003
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