About this lot

Description

§ Gillian Lowndes (British, 1936-2010), wall hanging,

fired mixed media
38 x 75cm

Quietly disquieting and with unsettling sentience, grey-tipped talons appear to pierce the fossilised ceramic flesh of the present lot, as if this intriguing object has been gestating an extra-terrestrial life form. Operating far beyond the restraints and expectations of traditional ceramics, Gillian Lowndes is today celebrated as one of the most audacious and creatively uninhibited ceramic artists and teachers of her generation.

Born in West Kirby, Cheshire, in 1936, Lowndes spent much of her childhood in India before training at the Central School of Arts and Crafts from 1957. Initially studying sculpture, Lowndes soon found herself drawn to the pottery department, where she studied first under Dora Billington and later under Gilbert Harding Green. Renowned as a lively and progressive teaching environment, it was at the Central School of Arts and Crafts that Lowndes first met such influential figures as Ruth Duckworth, Dan Arbeid, Gordon Baldwin and Ian Auld - the latter of whom she would later marry. Following her studies in London and after a year studying in Paris at L'École des Beaux-Arts in 1970, Lowndes accompanied Auld on an 18-month research trip to Nigeria. Experiencing the rich material culture of the country, Lowndes quickly became fascinated with the bricolage nature of West African sculpture, which typically juxtaposed several unexpected materials and methods within the construction of a single artifact. Whilst her distinctive artistic voice is undoubtedly the result of a confluence of experiences, the influence of these objects on Lowndes’ work cannot be understated.

Exploring the absolute limits of the medium and the transformative properties of the kiln, Lowndes’ entropic and unquantifiable works have won praise for their raw physicality and for their ability to challenge the boundaries between art and craft, ancient and modern, organic and alien. So experimental are these works that it is almost easier to conceive that they have been excavated from an archaeological site or dredged from the deepest depths of the ocean, the evidence of a lost civilisation or a visit from an alien race, than it is to accept that they have been made by human hands.

Acquired from the Lynn Strover Gallery, Cambridge.  In seemingly good condition with no apparent condition issues, examined under UV light.

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