Our latest exhibition, A Sense of Perspective, opens on September 10th and considers the relationship between form and use — examining ceramics as both sculptural objects and functional design elements.
The four artists — Emmanuel Boos, Carina Ciscato, Florian Gadsby and Sara Moorhouse — each bring a distinctive design sensibility to their practice, well versed in site-specific commissions, installation, furniture and graphic design. Displayed within the intimate, domestic setting of the gallery, the works explore how ceramic objects can transform and enrich the spaces we live in.
Emmanuel Boos, who was awarded the Jury’s Special Mention for the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, builds expressive arrangements and constellations from a single universal form — pieces that interact with one another in space, and which have translated into striking site-specific installations for fireplaces, tables and bars across France, California and Portugal. Carina Ciscato brings an architect’s eye to wheel-thrown porcelain, stretched, cut and folded into forms with an expansiveness that seems to float — a sensibility that led to her major installation for Eric Parry Architects at No.8 St James’s Square. Florian Gadsby’s sharp-angled, architectural forms, shown here following his first installation, Still Life I, at this year’s Collect Art Fair, bring a quiet, contemplative precision to functional ware. And Sara Moorhouse uses banded colour to alter our very perception of a form’s scale and depth, work that has ranged from a NASA commission marking the Apollo moon landing to a site-specific series for Chatsworth House.
The gallery will be open Thursday 10th – Saturday 26th September, Tuesdays–Saturdays, 10.00am–5.00pm, or by appointment.
For more information, please call 020-8995-9960 or email info@joannabird.com.
Emmanuel Boos is best known for his mastery understanding of glaze depth and texture. After first discovering ceramics as an exchange student at Gould Academy, he later went on to apprentice under glaze master Jean Girel, and wrote his 2011 PhD on the poetics of glazes.
Emmanuel works through a single, universal form, using slip-cast and slab-built blocks as a canvas for his glazes to interact. Emmanuel’s pieces often interact with each other too, forming arrangements and constellations that are sensual, humorous, and always delicately balanced.
It is these expressive arrangements in space that make Emmanuel’s work so enticing for site-specific commissions, of which he has done many. Fireplaces, tables and bars bring dynamism, life and, yes, poetry to their domestic settings. In France, California and Portugal, his installations have led to editorials in Wallpaper* and Elle.
In 2011, Emmanuel was a Jerwood Makers Open Laureate, and from 2016 to 2019 was artist in residence at the Cité de la Céramique, Sèvres, Paris. In 2024, he was awarded a special mention by the Loewe Prize jury for his Coffee Table Comme un lego. His technical mastery also led to his appointment as ‘Glaze Consultant’ at Hermès.
Carina Ciscato is a Brazilian potter from Sao Paulo who moved to the UK in September 1999, where she worked in the studio of Julian Stair and Edmund de Waal. Originally trained in industrial design, one can see the influences of architects like Frank Gehry in her practice. Working in wheel-thrown porcelain which she later stretches, cuts and folds, Carina’s work has an expansiveness that appears to float, lifting a room with a lightness and grandeur that belies their true scale.
In fact, Carina’s refined sensibility for structure and balance led in 2015 to a major installation for Eric Parry Architects at No.8 St. James Square, facilitated through the gallery. Carina produced a total of thirty one porcelain vessels which are situated in a four tier, two meter display in the entrance lobby. Similarly, in 2013, Carina was one of four artists chosen for Marking the Line: Ceramics and Architecture, a major exhibition of site-specific work at the Sir John Soane Museum, curated by Joanna. The exhibition later traveled to two other Soane-designed houses – Port Eliot in Cornwall and Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing.
Florian first became enamoured with clay at school in Hertfordshire, but it was on the ceramic design course in Thomastown, Ireland where he honed his style of functional ware. His simple, architectural forms, with their sharp angles and precise lines, are surprisingly calming. His restrained palette of reduction-fired feldspathic glazes is refined and restrained, offering depth and texture. What is most striking about Florian’s pots, and indeed even his drawings of pots, is the incredible precision with which he considers the finest details of his work. It is a diligence that may well have been picked up under his apprenticeship with Japanese potter Ken Matsuzaki.
Florian completed his first instillation, Still Life I, for our stand at Collect Art Fair this year. Mixing eleven functional and sculptural pieces, the subtle variations in colour and surface texture create an effect that is both practical and contemplative, they seem to hum quietly on their shelf, quietly calling to be used.
Sara began her career in illustration and 3D design before moving into ceramics, colour and spatial perception with a Masters degree at Cardiff in 2003. A PhD in 2006 developed these ideas, exploring spatial colour phenomena on the three-dimensional form.
Sara’s masterly understanding of perspective and colour allows her to explore a great variety of concepts within her work. Her use of banded colour, which often allude to certain landscape scenes, perceptibly alter the size, depth and shape of the form to which they are applied. The forms can be made to seem wider or narrower, deeper or shallower, heavier or lighter, or they may appear to undulate, bend, move or hover by the juxtaposition of finer lines.
Within a collection Sara may use only four of five colours, but 9 or more colours are visible to the viewer due to a phenomenon known as simultaneous contrast, where the eye sees different colours depending on the neighbouring hue. One of the strongest colour illusions is that of red juxtaposed with dark blue; the red is altered so much it appears as a bright fuschia pink.
In 2019, Joanna commissioned Sara to create an artwork that represented space in some way for NASA, to be exhibited and auctioned at the 50th anniversary celebrations for the 1969 Apollo moon landing, at Kennedy Space Centre. What emerged was the Saturn series. The 5 colours in Saturn were derived from an image of Saturn seen through an infrared lens, showing colours the naked eye cannot see. Sara often works in series, producing works that respond to specific subjects or sites, including at Chatsworth House for the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire for Living with Pieces we Love.
Nest create beautiful hand crafted furniture made from solid timber. Their signature pieces are known for the clarity of their lines and seamless profiles. The work is distinctive in its use of polished lacquer in bright intense colours.
Their Phoenix series creates an unusual juxtaposition of reconstituted charred timber (made using the Japanese charring technique shou-sugi-ban) and vibrant lacquer surfaces.
In 2005 they received the Irish Furniture Design Award presented by John Makepeace. Nest’s furniture is in private collections and Museums internationally.
The top of the Phoenix console is made up of 15 layers vibrant lacquer. In contrast to this, the underside is a charcoal black. The wood has been treated with a Japanese charring technique known as shou-sugi-ban. The top layer of the wood is burnt and then the hardened surface is cleaned and coated with oil for the smooth finish.
Pierre Jeanneret was a Swiss architect who collaborated with his cousin, Charles Edouard Jeanneret (who assumed the pseudonym Le Corbusier). The cousins set up an architectural practice together in 1922
In 1922, the Jeanneret cousins set up an architectural practice together. They designed many buildings, including a number of villas and holiday homes.
As well as buildings, Pierre also designed furniture, both independently and with his cousin, Le Corbusier.
In the early 1950s Pierre Jeanneret began a new project at Chandigarh, in India, at the invitation of his cousin Le Corbusier. Pierre was responsible for a significant amount of designing for the Panjab University, including the Gandhi Bhawan and the University Library. After the project finished, Pierre Jeanneret stayed on as Chief Architect of the city for over a decade.
