Jennifer Lee exhibition

Jennifer Lee’s second solo exhibition at Erskine, Hall & Coe will open this month. This exhibition of new works will present some of the ceramics which Lee made in Japan alongside works made in London.

Lee’s vessels are traditionally hand-built from flattened coils. She has developed a method of colouring them by mixing metallic oxides into the clay. The mixed coloured clays are sometimes left to mature for years – even decades – before being used.

Since Lee’s last show at Erskine, Hall & Coe in 2013, she has spent over five months in Japan, most of which time she worked as a guest artist in residence at Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Centre. In 2015, she had her first commercial solo show in Japan, and she also exhibited at the Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art.

Working in Shigaraki gave Lee a new freedom to experiment with different clays and materials. It was there that she first started working in red clay; she also made flat wall pieces and thrown pots in Shigaraki.

Lee’s work is highly sought after by international private collectors and public collections. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum as well as the Victoria & Albert Museum are among the 39 institutions that have acquired her work. Since her last exhibition at Erskine, Hall & Coe, the British Museum have procured two of her vessels, and the Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art and the Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art in Shigaraki have each added a drawing and a ceramic work to their collections.

In 2017, Lee looks forward to participating in an exhibition of British ceramics at the Yale Center for British Art in Connecticut.

Alun Graves, Senior Curator of the Ceramics and Glass Collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum, has written of Lee’s work:

“Jennifer Lee’s pots are not created as an alternative to modern life, but they are a grounding presence within it. A touchtone of permanency and beauty within the maelstrom.”

The exhibition at Erskine, Hall & Coe will feature hand-built vessels, single wall works, a diptych and drawings, and will run from the 29th of September through the 27th of October. A catalogue accompanying the exhibition will include an essay by Emma Crichton-Miller.