Ceramics artist Jan Howlin explores nostalgia and domesticity in her exhibition Show of Care.
June 9th, 2011
Jan Howlin first explored how everyday life is maintained within the home for her installation as part of a Masters Degree at Sydney College of the Arts in 2010.
The installation has now been reconfigured and brought to Glebe, Sydney’s Salerno Gallery.
Over 40 individual ceramic pieces, Howlin draws on her own childhood and family experiences to create thoughtful works that encourage reflection and emotional connection with its viewers.
Howlin recently shared her inspiration and insights with Indesignlive.
What inspires you about working with ceramics?
The wonderful thing about ceramics for me is its unlimited potential to create three dimensional form. I trained in graphic design originally and the design and communication work I had done before I picked up a lump of clay was basically two-dimensional, whether electronic or in print.
Clay is just an amorphous mass until you form it into a shape, and really, it’s up to you what to do with it. It also responds well to curvature, asymmetry and organic shapes which resonate naturally with me.
The collection is very personal. How do you want visitors to feel when they encounter it? What do you hope they’ll take away from it?
I was really wanting the forms that I made to have a deep meaning, for me firstly, but I was always hoping other people would read their own experiences into the objects I was making.
I had never created an installation in this way before, so I had no idea what people would think, but I was absolutely delighted that they responded so well to these things. It seemed they could really see what I was getting at, and in lots of ways too, that even though our experiences of care and childhood can be heartfelt they can also be whimsical or funny.
Do you hope to explore similar themes in later works? Are you working on new pieces or a new collection?
I am working on a new collection. It’s early days yet but the works seem to be more about how we interact with our partners, how we live our domestic lives, dealing with the joys and pleasures and the difficulties we experience. It’s an equally emotionally charged area for me, and I don’t think I’m alone in this – we’ll see what happens.
Show of Care is on display at Salerno Gallery from 24 May to 11 June. Jan Howlin moonlights as writer of Indesign magazine’s Luminary section.
Salerno Gallery
salernogallery.com
A searchable and comprehensive guide for specifying leading products and their suppliers
Keep up to date with the latest and greatest from our industry BFF's!
Bidding farewell to mundane and uninspired office spaces, colour has transformed our workplaces into layered and engaging environments. So we sit down with Karina Simpson, Hot Black’s Workplace Lead, to talk about the influence colour has on the workspace landscape through the prism of Herman Miller’s progressive colour philosophy.
Natural forms meet technological sophistication to produce GH Commercial’s Pattern Perfect® Native Collection of carpets. Step inside the factory to see how local flavours inform the design.
Living Edge definitely has the edge when it comes to supplying furniture for the education sector. With a plethora of brands and collections at their fingertips, Living Edge provides the perfect solution for any learning environment.
The workplace has changed – and it will continue to evolve. With dynamism at the heart of clients’ requirements, architects and designers at leading practices such as Elenberg Fraser are using and recommending Herman Miller’s OE1 products for the future workplace.
The countdown is on and there’s just three weeks to go before Sydney Indesign 2015 kicks off!
People with a penchant for pets and design can now house their dogs in clean-lined contemporary kennels
The internet never sleeps! Here's the stuff you might have missed
The North Building at the Art Gallery of New South Wales is complete. Part of the Sydney Modern Project and designed by Japanese practice SANAA, with Architectus as executive architects, it is a magical, ethereal spatial experience and a globally significant building.
Producing contemporary furniture, lighting and objects out of Melbourne, Ross Graham is a team of designers, engineers and makers whose limited edition collections merge form with desire.
We have all felt it and continue to experience the ramifications of change. It’s in the air and workplace design is at the vanguard of creating new approaches to working. Design leads the way at the 2023 INDE.Awards as the spotlight shines on The Work Space category and a partner who has recently made a historic change on a global scale.
Timothy Alouani-Roby met with Richard Francis-Jones of fjcstudio (formerly fjmtstudio) to discuss his timely, provocative and, quite frankly, necessary book on architecture. In this first part of the book review, we consider the alienation and commodification of the profession, as well as its place in society.