Ashley Howard 'Surface IN Form' Tokyo

Between 23 March and 7 April 2024, Howard will be exhibiting his work at Tokyo’s prestigious Gallery St Ives. This Howard’s first solo show at the gallery. https://www.gallery-st-ives.co.jp/ See Catalogue

Howard has known Koichiro isaka, the proprietor of the Gallery St Ives for many years. Howard’s foreword to the catalogue reads, I have had the great pleasure of knowing Koichiro Isaka for many years. He is an integral part of the close relationship the UK and Japan have between ceramics. I am fortunate enough to work at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham. This campus plays host the Crafts Study Centre. The Crafts Study Centre is a specialist university museum open to the public as well as a research centre and home to internationally renowned collections of modern British craft. Ceramics feature heavily and the late Professor Simon Olding ensured that the legacy between the UK and Japan in this area was nurtured and set to continue for the future which is now in the secure hands of Dr Stephen Knott.

Of course, the foundations of the relationship between our two nations were laid down by Leach and Hamada. Koichiro Isaka’s involvement in ceramics recognises the legacy stemming from the work between Leach and Hamada and the influence the two exerted on the British studio pottery movement of the twentieth century.

I am very honoured to be asked by Gallery St Ives to exhibit my work in such a special environment. It means a great deal to me. The work on show looks at the relation ship between surface and form. We have called the exhibition Surface In Form based on my research into the sinking of the colours into the surface of the glaze, as opposed to them sitting on the surface. This approach is best described by Adrian Bland, who wrote in the catalogue that accompanied my exhibition Meditations, in Guildford cathedral in 2018, Howard himself has spoken of his early reticence with regard to decoration, his holding back from being a ‘potter that paints’ (Howard, 2018), and for some time his idiosyncratic mark making remained bound within the sketchbook. Such reticence was perhaps first confronted technically, with research into the right materials and processes, the right temperatures, to push the mark-making into the pot, so that the surface is not sitting on the form, but rather becomes integral to it, and the pot retains a ceramic integrity that somewhat refutes the notion of clay as canvas; ‘the glaze has pulled the marks right in’ (Howard, 2018).

Interestingly, my current research is looking more closely at the relationship between my drawing and ceramic form, which is questioning the issues set out above. As a maker it is important to me to keep pushing forward and to question what has gone before. That said I am very mindful and grateful to Leach and Hamada for bringing our nations together in this area. Koichiro Isaka is a guardian of those origins and long may his work continue.

Bibliography

Meditations: 2018, ISBN 978-1-5272-1984-7