Celebrating the 20th Century'due south Most Radical Ceramic Creative person

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Lowndes working on Stacked Forms in the studio at Camberwell Grove, 1976 Paradigm courtesy of Gillian Lowndes Archive

Gillian Lowndes' radical application of found objects singles her out every bit one of her medium's most daring practitioners, and yet her legacy has been largely left in the dark, until now

Who? Historically, the field of ceramics art has been unfairly labelled as a fusty, crafty pastime – one inferior to its more cerebral siblings in sculpture and painting, and founded on the applied uses of pottery rather than museum-worthy artwork. This all changed, however, with Gillian Lowndes. Born in Cheshire in 1936, the British sculptor began her career in comparatively traditional way, studying at the Central School of Arts and crafts in London and for a twelvemonth at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the 1950s. Switching from Art to Ceramics midway through her studies, she worked primarily in clay, using coiling and slabbing techniques to develop her sculptural forms.

It wasn't until she spent a twelvemonth and a half in Nigera with her partner Ian Auld, in fact, that she began to develop the radical, experimental techniques which she has since become famous for. Living with Nigeria's Yoruba people, Lowndes was exposed to tribal art the likes of which she had never seen before, which combined materials, textures and surface decoration with a vivacity that she constitute irresistible. "Following her render to the U.k., Lowndes began experimenting, dipping fibreglass sheets into slip and porcelain, draping this over wire skeletons, creating fragile yet visually intense sculptural forms," writes the Centre of Ceramic Art. "She started breaking upward fired ceramics, attaching pieces together, assembling montages of her own work." This radical and quietly assured new direction helped Lowndes to establish herself as one of the nearly daring voices of her generation in the world of ceramics, and she maintained this office, pedagogy, making and exhibiting her ain piece of work until her death in 2010.

What?Lowndes' experimental methods take posed a claiming to the world of ceramics ever since she kickoff developed her controversial methods on render from Nigeria in the 1970s – not to the lowest degree through her innovative destruction and so use of found objects to create her sculptures, ranging from bricks, wire and kitchen utensils (which she would oftentimes estrus to immense temperatures earlier incorporating their remains in her work) to bulldog clips, can openers and pliers. "The found materials [Lowndes employs] are poor, low-status ones," Tanya Harrod wrote in the Jan issue of Transcending Dirt Crafts; "onetime bricks, clinker, granite clippings, mild steel strip, cheap industrially made cups and tiles". This presented a claiming to the stubborn orthodoxy of ceramic sculpture, which was ill at ease with Lowndes' willingness to straddle the worlds of high and low art, and to draw attention to residuum markers of the working and upper classes. This, nevertheless, was exactly her point. "It is the methods and materials that produce the ideas, non the other way round," she told the British Quango. She continued in her experiments unhindered.

The rich visual linguistic communication which resulted from such a autonomous arroyo to her materials attracted an impressive following to Lowndes' work: many of her pieces made their way into individual collections thanks to her representation by Primavera Gallery; the Five&A caused pieces from the 1960s onwards; she had a major solo exhibition with the Crafts Quango in 1987 and took part in a groundbreaking exhibition entitled The Raw and the Cooked in 1993. Not but was Lowndes comfortable occupying the liminal space betwixt fine art and 'working course' adroitness, she positively revelled in it, maintaining a defiant modesty which she is remembered for to this day.

Why?In spite of Lowndes' radical legacy her piece of work has gone largely uncelebrated in recent years, tucked abroad in private collections. This winter, nevertheless, a retrospective exhibition at London gallery The Sun Painter – the largest presentation of her works for more than 20 years – is returning her to her well-deserved place in the limelight. "Lowndes operated on the edge territory between fine fine art and craft, and is renowned for her sensitive investigations of material and procedure, of serendipity and sculptural form," the gallery explains. "Pigeonholed by the craft establishment of the time, her work predated the expanded ceramics field of the tardily 20th and early 21st centuries, while her pioneering transformation of dirt and establish objects places her firmly in the linguistic communication and discourse of sculpture, a critical context that remained airtight to her in her lifetime." At present, at last, Lowndes is receiving her ante.

Gillian Lowndes' work is on display at The Lord's day Painter until Dec 23, 2016.