JANE KING
Cluster Crafts Exhibitor | 2024
FOLD SERIES | 2024
Jane King obtained her MA in Ceramics from Bath Spa University in 2012, achieving distinction for her final project. Since then, her work has been exhibited widely in the UK and internationally. In 2013, she won the Medal of the President of the Italian Republic in the International Competition for Contemporary Ceramics, Faenza, Italy. Her work has also been shortlisted for other national and international awards and prizes, including the inaugural Young Master’s Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize (London, 2014); the inaugural Carter Preston Prize (Liverpool, 2016), the Annex Collection Acquisition Award (London, 2017), the European Prize for Applied Art (Mons, Belgium, 2018), and the inaugural BADA Art Prize (London, 2021). She was awarded the inaugural Breaker Award by the Making Waves Ceramics Trust in 2021.
FOLD SERIES | 2022
SPILL SERIES | 2018
Jane has held solo shows in the Project Space at the National Centre for Craft and Design (Sleaford, 2015) and at ACEArts, (Somerton, 2022). Her work has also been exhibited at MK Gallery, (Milton Keynes), Bluecoat Display Centre (Liverpool), and at Sculpture Lounge, (Holmfirth). Her work is held in public and private collections in the UK, USA and Italy.
Jane’s ceramic sculptures possess a strong voice and a bold narrative about contrast, visual drama and playfulness.
“My ceramic sculptures possess a strong voice, and a bold narrative about contrast, visual drama and playfulness.
My work is driven by my reflection that contemporary life, particularly as it is presented on social media, is so often a fiction: a curated, controlled and idealised version of ourselves and our lives rather than a reflection of the real, chaotic and imperfect nature of existence. This concept is explored through the physical characteristics of my sculptures, with form, surface and colour acting as metaphors for control and disorder.”
ABSENCE SERIES | 2018
“I aim for sculptural tension between states of messiness and the uncontrolled, and the tidy and ordered - the two states co-habiting dynamically in each object to achieve contrasts which are exciting. The work is process-driven, and technically challenging. I work slowly and carefully with clay, hand-building, constructing or throwing some elements. I combine this with looser handling, such as smearing or combing sticky clay onto a smooth surface, or quickly twisting and squeezing a thrown form to set it off-kilter.
Surface treatments include dark glazes offset by vivid acrylics. The use of non-ceramic material provides an additional means of achieving contrast, in colour, and in surface quality and feel.”
