Untitled | Canvas ii (detail), handbuilt black clay, inscribed line, relief surface and vitreous slip, diptych, 48 x 40 x 5 cm. Image credit: Shannon Tofts
We are looking forward to welcoming Frances Priest to the gallery this August for her debut solo exhibition, Unfixing. The exhibition will showcase wall and plinth based ceramic pieces, as well as a series of work on paper.
Marking a new departure in her practice, Frances has focused on a collection of universally familiar pattern structures. Through a process of deconstructing and reconfiguring the component motifs, she has pushed into abstraction, exploring movement, space and colour.
Frances’ colour choices are intuitive but have their roots in the Hugo Burge Foundation residency she undertook in April 2023, where the seeds for this new body of work emerged. Responding to the unfurling of Spring in the rural studio setting and the extensive collection of arts and crafts ceramics collected by Hugo himself: Burmantoft vessels, Pilkington vases, and Minton tiles.
The show consists of predominantly wall-based works, with some free-standing pieces that are still focused on two-dimensional planes. Most of the pieces are made up of more than one component and are constructed so that they can be re-arranged and hung in multiple configurations. This element of play and invitation for the viewer to complete the work remains an important and ongoing theme. A nod toward the democratic nature of ornament and pattern as universal visual languages. The inherent familiarity and tactility of clay, and a wish to share with the audience a sense of the pleasures of making with materials using craft processes.
Ashley Thorpe has written an essay to accompany Frances’ exhibition, which can be found here.
