Kettle’s Yard
I have visited Kettle’s Yard before and relished the balance and harmony present and the thought taken in curating the space, originally and how the ideals are still realised today. The simple placement of objects and the arrangement of chairs to view parts of the house from an angle you wouldn’t normally do as you would be standing and walking around.
It’s a very personal, yet public space. The idea of bring the gallery into the home and then the home as a gallery is portrayed in such a unique way. The collection, the space, the light all sing together. Maybe it was as we were part of a large group but the one thing I felt was missing was time. The guide discussed how long Jim Ede would take over the positioning of a piece of work, perhaps letting it sit all day as he watched the light change to decide where it worked best, yet I felt rushed, unable to take the same sort of time to explore, let alone sit and absorb. I know there is a great demand to get visitors around but a little more time would have really helped to let more on view sink in.
There are so many parts of the house that you can really feel the presence of Jim and Helen Ede. You do feel transported back in time to when Jim would have invited students around for a tour of the collection, it’s at times like these that you wish you had a time machine. How much more would you have learnt or understood or maybe that is one of the many points it makes, it is up to you to take from the experience what you wish and how you have to imagine a the house as it was when it was a house, a home. The combination of artwork, furniture, plants, glass, stones and fossils have left a really positive impression. It makes you review your own space, how you display items within your own environment, whether that be a studio or a home. There was no clutter, no items that were just put, the relationship thay had with each other and the viewer were very considered. All this calm and organised aura that the house gives off now and has done for years is such a contrast to where it all began with Ede being invalided out of the horrors of WWI. when asked about his experiences of the war ’Ede told people to read Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of An Infantry Officer because his own memories were not much different.’ as discussed in an article by Jonathan Jones in the Guardian about a new book ‘Ways of Life: Jim Ede and the Kettle’s Yard Artists by Laura Freeman, published by Jonathan Cape. Jones goes on to say ‘Ede’s generation were driven to search for meaning in the ashes. Kettle’s Yard is the answer Ede found. It breathes a belief in art as something more than decor or depiction: it’s a home, yet also a kind of chapel.’ (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/may/16/kettles-yard-how-britains-avant-garde-found-a-cosy-home-in-cambridge#:~:text=Kettle%E2%80%99s%20Yard%20is%20the%20answer,as%20Winifred%20and%20Ben%20Nicholson).
When the house was closed for refurbishment, which included the research and education centre, a shop and a café. all the items were numbered and packed away to be replaced in exactly the same way. Still with no labels. As much as you want to know what is by who and when it was created this is not what the experience is about, it needs to continue to be the space it was always intended to be.
In an article published in The Art Newspaper, interviewing the Director of Kettle’s Yard Andrew Nairne, in 2018 by José da Silva they discuss the balance between the art and the items on show “A lemon on a pewter dish, which mirrors the yellow in a nearby Miró painting, is continually replenished and acts as the “most amazing stab of colour”, Nairne says. Ede’s approach remains “remarkable”, he says. “Jim argued that taking time to look at a beautiful arrangement of pebbles - that anyone could make and that is worth nothing in financial value - is as important as looking at a Miró.” This, I feel, highly satisfying as it brings together the idea of what can be art and that it doesn’t have to be elevated to a point where it should be exclusive and beyond the grasp, intellectually or actually, from anyone. Let every piece take its place and let anyone pass their judgement and attach their own value on it.
Further visits will be had and further thoughts will no doubt also be had. Kettle’s Yard is a place to savour and a place to learn, relax, enjoy and inspire.
Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery
In the main exhibition space at Kettle’s Yard was an exhibition of work by Lucie Rie. Someone I had never heard of but was entranced by the delicate work and glazes used on so many of the works. Many of them didn’t look like ceramics at all but more like items honed out of bronze or gold, wonderfully fine in look and decoration.
Researching about Rie’s background and how she had to escape Austria as a Jewish refugee in 1938, coming to England where she tried to establish herself and her studio. Rie was considered an ‘enemy alien’ coming from Austria and wasn’t permitted a license to make pots, a requirement that no longer applies. In order to make aliving she started to make buttons for the fashion industry and in doing so experiemented with different finishes and glazes. A collection of her buttons were on show, along with other small fragments of ceramics and fascinating to look at.
There are various pieces of Rie’s work dotted around the house and in a review in the Guardian, Hannah Clugston comments, “Edes loved Rie’s work, and they understood the power it had in their home. During the 1970s, several ceramic shows opened at Kettle’s Yard and every night – after the gallery closed – Jim would carry Rie’s work known as “The Wave” into his house to observe the way light interacted with its dappled surface. This conical bowl now permanently sits where Jim placed it, on a slate table in front of triptych by Italo Valenti, allowing us to fully appreciate the way in which Rie’s modest creations could enliven an entire scene.” (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/mar/15/lucie-rie-the-adventure-of-pottery-review-kettles-yard-cambridge).
The hand of the artist is so evident with this work, as it is with ceramics and pottery generally but there is such a unique and gentle touch to this work it is not only the artist’s hand but their signature.
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge.
Museums can be quite an alienating experience, there is much to read, many cabinets to view and without any background knowledge I find it can soon become one fossil or replica after another. However, with this visit we had the pleasure of a personal discussion and mini presentation from one of the Scientists based at the museum. This brought to life so much more of the exhibits, in particular fossils found by Mary Anning on the Dorset coastline in early 19th Century. Taught by her father how to find, clean and collect fossils, she continued to do so after his death at a young age, although rarely recognised for the finds.
We were told about the first ichthyosaur found by Anning, which was on display. This is discussed on the Natural History Museum website in an article ‘Mary Anning: the unsung hero of fossil discovery. By Marie-Claire Eylott’. - ‘Around 1811, when Mary was 12, Joseph found a strange-looking fossilised skull. Mary then searched for and painstakingly dug the outline of its 5.2-metre-long skeleton. By the time she was done, several months later, everyone in town knew she had discovered what must have been a monster.’ Bearing in mind this was 48 years before Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published.
The article goes on to explain how Mary also found the first complete skeleton of a Plesiosaraurus, even though the find was considered a fake until a special meeting at the Geological Society of London was held and decided otherwise, a meeting to which Mary was not invited being a woman. (https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/mary-anning-unsung-hero.html).
Duria Antiquior - A More Ancient Dorset
The other main item we discussed in the museum was a painting that was on show depicting prehistoric life on the Dorset coast. Painted by Henry De la Beche, who sold prints to support Mary Anning, his friend from childhood. Known as Palaeoart, it is a representation of what artists have imagined in the past (and indeed still today) certain environments and scenarios. There is a lot of gap filling, as much as they may have had the skeltal and scientific information about any of the creatures the rest is clearly made up, colours, vegetation, location and behaviour. Although what was originally painted soon becomes accepted as truth as it is then used in future paintings and as the nation’s interest in fossils and dinosaurs increased. It was interesting to discuss how the representations were accepted as they way earth was in the time of dinosaurs and then replicated by others thereby not only continuing the myth but also confirming it as real by accpetance. Is this because it had a scientific basis onw which to build rather than just an artist creating an object or image?
Today, paleoart is a globally-recognized genre of scientific art, and has been the subject of international contests and awards, galleries, and a variety of books and other merchandise. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoart)
Robert Farren’s version of Duria Antiquior painted for Adam Sedgwick in 1850, minus the plesiosaur’s poo. Something that Mary Anning found much evidence of and helped to her to understand her discoveries.
Anthony Gormley’s inverted statue at McDonald Research Institute, Cambridge.
Easily missed, walked past or even on, are the soles of an Anthony Gormley statue. Even more fascinating is that the whole statue has been inverted and buried at the site.
“It’s a very conscious decision to remove the body from visual perception and replace it within the body of the earth ... So this is possible sculpture, you don’t really know whether it’s there or not but we are invited to stand on these two feet and be the sculpture. You then have a living, conscious body with this foundation or root.”
(Quotation framed on wall of entrance hallway, McDonald Research Institute).
I only wish I had stood on the feet, bare footed and made the connection physical rather than just visually.
Abi Freckleton ‘Made Again’. Quip & Curiosity, Cambridge
The work on show immediately resonated with me. Initially visually as I felt a real connection through my current work in the way the objects were constructed, connected and their scale. Then as I found out more about Freckleton’s practice and how the pieces were conceived I felt an even closer association. On Quip & Curiosity’s website the artist discusses her processes and thoughts. ‘Each component part has undergone several rounds of processing before settling in its current state. A photograph is copied multiple times then torn to pieces and melted, a puddle’s clay-like matter fired at different temperatures to yield powders of varying hues, a forest’s carpet of pine needle burnt to ash then transformed into a honey glass coating on the surface of a porcelain tile.’ (https://quipandcuriosity.co.uk/).
Visually I found the pieces on show stunning and how they played materialistically, even without knowing the content of the materials. There was little information on display and only through researching afterwards and engaging with the artist through her social media dis I find out how much was involved in the making of the items and also how many were re-made, re-purposed.
‘Many of the works are made of the broken pieces of previous works. Some will return to the studio to be broken down and used again. The works, like all things, are just momentary gatherings of matter that will soon disperse, only to be made again.’ (https://quipandcuriosity.co.uk/).
Looking at Freckleton’s website, the work is described as - ‘composed from the rubble of things. Things she has found and foraged from these resonant moments. Both material and photographic samples are excavated, broken down and then recombined along with clay, glaze, glass, paper and other components. Aggregated together and allowed to flow, these gatherings of matter take on their own new forms.’ (https://www.abifreckleton.co.uk/info).
There is a clear difference between this work and my current outcomes but there is also a lot of similarities and connections. I found the idea of the liquid glaze, permanising the contents yet still flowing, giving movement, action and fluidity to the work. I found the connection between the fragments most satisfying, became joining parts as well as functional elements of the structure and crucial to the whole piece. The glue becomes part of the whole. Each piece has its own palette, which is something I have gone away from, I have neutralised the colour in my current work, to move away from the original content to something new and metamorphosed.