Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) has teamed up with Yorkshire Artspace (YAS) this summer to exhibit an outstanding array of artwork ranging from ceramics to silversmithing, jewellery and leatherwork from 17 talented Yorkshire-based artists.
A full list of the artists and makers taking part appears below. Each is renowned for their individual specialism, working with galleries and outlets across the UK and internationally. All the works are for sale, with the proceeds going to the artists and to support YSP’s charitable work.
Amanda Peach, YSP’s retail programme and development manager, said: “YSP is well known for supporting up and coming talents from Yorkshire, and this exciting collaboration with YAS allows us to support 17 artists at once. We think our visitors will appreciate the huge variety of skills on display and ultimately help support some of Yorkshire’s most talented makers and artists.”
YAS is one of the largest creative communities in the UK, providing studio space for around 170 practising artists and makers across two sites in Sheffield City Centre. It was the brainchild of a group of art graduates and, coincidentally, was founded the same year as YSP (1977). It was one of the first studio groups to develop outside of London.
Georgina Kettlewell, director of YAS, said: “Sheffield is an important UK centre for creative production – it’s a city of skilled contemporary makers, home to a vibrant mix of creative people and artistic practices. We’re proud of the talent based in our studios and we’re delighted to work with YSP, offering new opportunities to our studio members to showcase their craft.”
Contemporary ceramics
Nicola Gensler decided to drop out of the sculpture degree she was pursuing at Glasgow School of Art as she didn’t feel she belonged to the art world. After spending two decades in the food industry as a pastry chef, then running a bakery for another decade, she felt that the creative process had slipped through her fingers as she started spending more time managing people than rolling croissants. Gensler took baby steps to back out of the bakery without a real plan. However, within a few weeks, she enrolled on a pottery course. “As soon as my fingers touched the clay it all made sense!”
Gensler of Burnt Crust Pottery uses stoneware clay, and clay that she digs up from the rivers around Sheffield in order to “bring the place where she lives into her work”. She uses the wild clay in the bodies of the pieces she makes as it adds variable amounts of red iron oxide to the glazes.
Gensler continued: “I became fascinated with firing with a live flame – typically either wood or gas. The results you can get when you control the oxygen content of the kiln chamber are far more alive than when firing with an electric kiln. Copper glazes that would fire green in an electric oxidising atmosphere will fire red in a gas kiln where the reduction has been sufficient.”
She also sprays wood ash (waste from pizza ovens in the city) onto the surface of the pots as “one of the oldest ways of obtaining glazes”, which also means she uses less harmful oxides such as cobalt or copper.
Rebecca Perry’s earthenware and porcelain vessels are inspired by the landscape. Her pieces have abstract shapes and lines and use bright and vibrant colours “to give a contrast between the inside and exterior”.
Chatting to some of the visitors, Wakefield-based, Mark was mesmerised by the artwork of Pottery West, a ceramics studio run by husband and wife, Catherine and Matt West. The Wests use traditional techniques to make functional wheel-thrown tableware.
He also was extremely impressed by the artwork of Janet Barnes. Apart from her work as a ceramicist, Barnes led the redevelopment of York Art Gallery as a CEO for its reopening in 2015. She draws her inspiration from sculptural works, especially those by Gordon Baldwin and other 20th century artists, such as Barbara Hepworth and Hans Coper. Barnes said: “Exposure to the extensive collection over my 13 years in York has certainly helped in developing a visual language and ambition for my own work.”
Sheffield-based Hilary White, who visits Yorkshire Sculpture Park at least three times a year, was impressed by the artwork of Penny Wither. She expressed a desire to meet the artist to understand the perspective through “the artist’s lens”. White was also drawn to the piece by Hanne Westegaard, and explained that Westegaard’s work is exceptional in her eyes because it’s inspired by shapes and colours she observes in Derbyshire and in Sheffield’s botanical gardens.
Self-taught artists showcase their art
Self-taught craft person Jonathan Hyde of Hyde Wares started working with leather as a hobby while living in Portugal and learnt his skills primarily through YouTube tutorials and a lot of trial and error. He has now been in this field for almost a decade, of which about half has been spent working full time as a craft maker.
Hyde exclusively uses oak-tanned leather from a tannery in Devon, the last of its kind in the UK. He says it the highest quality vegetable-tanned leather produced in the UK and he loves the history of the site: there has been a tannery there for over 1000 years. The hides are a by-product of the meat industry, from pasture-fed cows in the West Country. He said: “We are rightly concerned with where our food is produced, and the fabrics that we wear, but I rarely hear people being as specific about leather production, which is a shame.”
Hyde also happens to be a keen hiker and is a volunteer ranger in the Peak District and is training to become a mountain leader. He aims to create timeless designs that are intended to be durable and repairable and he road tests everything he makes. Most of his pieces (such as key fobs, glass cases, card wallets, bags and dog leads) are minimalist and honest.
Largely self-taught, Mike Scown started working with clay over a decade ago after “a moment of inspiration struck while working in a restaurant that had begun using locally produced tableware”. He experimented with building and firing his own kilns and mixing his own glazes, first using the Raku technique, then later stoneware and porcelain. He built two gas kilns for YAS, which allow artists access to reduction firing through supported or independent firings.
Fresh perspectives
Becca Brown, who started making ceramics full time less than a year ago, adds a fresh perspective to her art with her drawing, painting and printmaking as she tries to build narrative on the surface of her hand-built ceramics. She often leaves fingerprints, brush strokes, and marks on purpose “to accentuate the relationship between vessel and subject”.
Living with anxiety and depression, Brown’s drawings are based on “normal, mundane parts of everyday life and on moments of connection between humans, and sometimes animals”. She said:
“I hope by capturing them in clay it will stop these moments being lost, sort of add value to them and make people stop and savour them. My family and good friends are spread out across the country and we communicate online through messages, phone calls and sending daft or sentimental memes. I hope the porcelain pinch pots in particular act in the same way that a meme would – capturing a playful or touching moment that people can relate to, but in a permanent and historically highly valued material.”
At school she was uncertain whether to focus on art or aim to work as a midwife or nursery nurse. In the end she chose to study textiles at university, started working with clay in her final year and has carried on ever since.
Pat Panther, who visited the exhibition from Leeds, liked Francisca Onumah’s figurative vessels and objects, which are formed using various fabrication techniques. According to Onumah:
“Uniform patterns are blended with imprints that are either intentionally formed or involuntarily picked up as the making process evolves. The employment of these so-called ‘imperfections’ challenges the hierarchical nature within silversmithing, by seeing beauty in the defects.”
Holly Suzanna Clifford’s jewellery is made from vibrant bio-resins, whereas every component in fellow artist Emily Thatcher’s jewellery was “either forged or sand cast as a one off” in her Sheffield studio.
Jazzy jewellery juxtaposed with nature
Josephine Gomersall’s work is entirely inspired by nature’s treasures and wonders. “I aim to convey the essence and beauty of the natural world; specifically botanical inspiration.” She studies, photographs and collects, then dries and presses, flowers, seedpods and their tiny seeds, grasses, skeletal plant structures and organic shapes.
Meanwhile, Chris Boland’s fascination with inorganic structure is used to form his jewellery pieces. “Strong bold shapes stress the unique qualities of the inclusions of gemstones.”
Jennie Gill has been a jewellery maker since graduating in 1991. Known for her modern spin on handmade tradition, her signature is in the raw energy and her pieces drew the attention of several youngsters at the exhibition.
Gill said: “I don’t draw or design on paper; I design at my bench, responding directly to the stones and metals I’m working with. Choices of material are important: diamonds are all ethically sourced or re-purposed and the gold is recycled.”
Daisy Lee who works predominantly with silver displayed her fluid contemporary jewellery pieces introducing elements of oxidation and 18-carat gold plate to draw the eye to details within the jewellery.
Perfect for social media (jewellery) influencers, Helena Russell’s work is inspired by her fascination with movement, objects that create a satisfying click, snap shut or slide to fit perfectly together – her pieces have multiple parts and/or uses.
Yorkshire Artspace: Maker Showcase, Yorkshire Sculpture Park Centre
15 April – 6 October 2024
How to find Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, Wakefield WF4 4LG
Near Wakefield and Barnsley – M1 Junction 38
+44 (0)1924 832631 | ysp.org.uk | @YSPsculpture
Open daily. The Weston restaurant, shop and gallery are closed on Mondays, excluding Wakefield school holidays and bank holidays.
Book tickets at ysp.org.uk
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