Jane
Wheeler
Born: Norfolk 1950
Education
1969-72
Dip Ad Ceramics, Bath Academy of Art, Corsham
1989-91 MFA, Newcastle Polytechnic
Group
Exhibitions - Painting
1993 Finalist, Arthur Andersen Art Award, London
1993 EAST Internaitonal Open, Norwich
1993 Open Door, London
1993 Northern Seen, Sunderland
1996 On the Corner, Sunderland
Solo
Exhibitions
1995 Middlesborough Art Gallery
1996 Hartlepool Art Gallery
1996 Wall Drawing Installation for A.A.H. Conference at University of Northumbria
1996 Visual Arts UK, Newcastle upon Tyne
1996 Cartwright Hall, Bradford
2008 Beaux Arts, Bath
Collections
A large number
of pots have recently been sold to a Japanese collector who is currently
arranging a show in Tokyo in 2007.
Statement
For me, the vessel, a space-containing hollow form, offers the richest language for working in clay. Its conceptual simplicity allows readings that allude to our most distant cultural pasts, and to the state of being human. Its limitations are those for which the potter’s tool and equipment are designed; it is a familiar scenario within which to work. Thus it becomes necessary to make working and the work uncomfortable in some way, to push the boundaries in order to attempt discovery of new or hidden qualities of this profoundly significant, yet ordinary object.
Description
of work
Slab built
pots.
Stoneware clay bodies with
added coarse grog and sand.
Stoneware reduction fired to
1260 C.
Dry matt glazes composed of
china clay, barium carbonate, magnesium carbonate, wood ash, feldspar.
Sensibilities from the salt
marshes and beaches of Norfolk coastlines, ancient British archaeology and
geology.
Influences drawn from Islamic
pottery, the work of Anselm Kiefer, Claudi Casanova, Tapies.
Like wrinkles, crakes, rirfts,
clay passing through time/ through heat.
Jane Wheeler returned to
making ceramics in 2003 after 30 years of being a knitwear designer.