Jane Millar
Jane's wall-based ceramic sculptures and installations start with the idea of energy within the unseen interior of a ceramic object, and its actions on a form and surface. The work alludes to a territory between natural and unnatural, between plant, body and earth.
A recent work for the exhibition 'Space Shift', Grip used the space at APT Gallery, Creekside, to create an installation of ceramic foot or hand 'holds' which were installed to the interior height of the gallery, presenting approximations and allusions to natural forms, with the seduction and longing, materiality and fragility of ceramics.
Millar's current work also engages with ideas of resemblances, repetition and memory. Her time as a museum educator and researcher resulted in a fascination with pedagogical structures. The work titled Orrery acts as an evolving imagining of a cosmos, both in her studio and exhibitions. Teaching Case, inspired by the post-war Werkbund cases, imagines a future crisis of unrecovered human and water memory. Foucault's tantalising discussion of emulata; a chain of mirroring forms, between earth, plants and sky; humans and animals, also lies behind her approach to an ongoing experimental series of wall-based flat ceramic plant-type forms, terrains and surfaces.
Jane has studied at Canterbury College of Art (BA fine Art), the Royal College of Art (MA in painting), and UCL IoE (MA in Education in Museums and Galleries).
Selected Exhibitions
New Doggerland2 (curated by Jane Millar and Stephen Nelson), Thameside Gallery, Woolwich, February (2020)
Site-specific exhibition at South London Botanical Institute (2020)
Creekside Open, APT Gallery, Deptford, London (2019)
New Doggerland, Lumen Gallery, London (2019)
40 Celsius - ASC Open, Grafton Quarter Exhibition space, Croydon (2018)
Space Shift, APT Gallery, Deptford (2018)
Ghost Tide, Thameside gallery, Woolwich. (2018)
Votive, Southwark Cathedral, for the Thames Festival, with the Associated Clay WorkersUnion (2018)
More in Common, APT Gallery, Deptford (2018)
The ING Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London (2017)
Creekside Open, APT Gallery, Deptford, London (2017)
Planet 7, Black stoneware with porcelain inlay and recyled brick addition to clay body
Dark Thought, Glazed stoneware, 15 x 17 x 5 cm (2017)
Teaching Case 2019 Ceramic, foam, wood and textiles. Each case 40w x 32h x 9d cm. Installation for New Doggerland, Lumen Crypt Gallery, May 2019.
Time At Hogchester Arts
Residency period - November 2021 (postponed from nov 2020 due to covid)
"The two week residency gave me the opportunity to do what I know is vital for developing my work - noticing things. I was able to do this and spend time writing, thinking and making, without the usual distractions. I did have some plans - to further investigate and locate resemblances between things in the world, across scale, metaphor and materials. So I started by going on a hunt for things. A walk and conversation with host artist Chantal and dog Piper on Charmouth beach late afternoon - Chantal told me stories and anecdotes about the area, the cliffs, the extraordinary Blue Lias clay which dried and formed into different textures after each tide, the treacherous properties of the cliff mudflows and their fossils, Black Ven cliffs dumping Victorian brick and scrap metal on to the beach, local gossip about a new film of Mary Anning's life. Walking east from Charmouth along the cliff top towards Golden Cap I had my first encounter with the beauty of the wildernesses created by the slipped cliffs - Cain's Folly with its micro landscapes of exquisite richness and diversity. I spent time looking around the farm land and surrounding area and found late November fungi such as Golden Spindles, Coral Fungus, a giant parasol mushroom, puffballs and logs covered with clouds of tiny white toadstools. I looked in to the detail of the meadows at Hogchester, with my small sculptures and wall drawings about combing or brushing in mind: the troublesome tendency of humans to classify and separate out tangling plant life. It's been a while since I walked in a strange place at twilight, turning to night, getting a bit lost, getting emotional.
A great part of my time at Hogchester was getting to know fellow resident artist Alice Wilson. Aside from the fact that Alice is brilliant fun to spend time with, it was also so interesting to have those longer conversations about our practice and get to know more about Alice's fascinating expanded work with materials (wood), culture and place, her embedding in place through walking, being alone and feeling things, Edinburgh Rock and headlamp photography. Our walk from Lyme Regis to Seaton, through the famous Undercliff, another almost primeval wilderness, was amazing. I had brought some favourite books - 'The Perception of Landscape' by ethnographer Tim Ingold being one of them, but I didn't really read this much as it was too familiar, and instead read Anne Carson's 'Nay Rather', brought by Alice, immersed myself in some of 'Dark Ecology' by Timothy Morton, and re-read Cold Comfort Farm with great pleasure, after finding a copy in the second hand bookshop in Lyme Regis that Chantal pointed out.
Sharing the beautiful studio at Hogchester, and getting to know Chantal and her lovely work was such a pleasure. It was good to talk all things ceramic and share experiences with different clays and glazes, as well as other materials. The day before the residency had started I had installed work in the show 'In (Matters of the Soul)' at ASC Gallery in South London, where I had combined info graphic type images painted directly on to the wall, with wall based ceramic sculptures. At Hogchester I started to make paper-based work developing these images as well as making beginnings with more clay work, using a new red stoneware, as well as photographing and notes. My time at Hogchester is processing through current work, and will be influencing what I am doing for quite some time."
