The Leach Pottery presents an exhibition of new works created by Leach 100 International Residency Artist Helen Doherty during her 10 week residency in Bernard Leach’s Studio.

Driven by the question, ‘What is St Ives?’, Helen’s artistic exploration is informed by the daily practice of walking, drawing and talking to locals: including dog walkers, street cleaners and priests. Observations, drawn from the countryside, town, and its inhabitants, have resulted in a multifaceted and shifting portrait of St Ives in the summer of 2022 – an essence of the town which is inherently temporary.

The exhibition includes a series of hand-built double and triple gourd vases each painted or finished in relief, with the narratives that have emerged from Helen’s immersive experience of living in St Ives. They are a celebration of beauty and variety encountered: a song to St Ives in clay.

Creative Process

A composite portrait of St Ives, built from various narrative threads, is embodied in ceramic vessels, including the gourd vase. The gourd is commonplace in South Africa, where Helen lives, and also represents the co-opted East (Sung Dynasty) in the North/West paradigm. Originating from the gourd plant forms of Sung dynasty China, the double-gourd is celebrated as a fertility symbol and Daoist emblem of immortality. As a ceramic form, it is an ideal canvas for the exploration of multiple complex drawings resulting in layered portraits.

Themes

Some motifs explored are the origins of St Ives, founded by Saint Ia who, in legend, crossed the Irish Sea to Cornwall on a leaf, and Saint Piran, Patron Saint of Tinners, whose first converts were a fox, badger and bear. Cornish hedgerows, ancient repositories of living history, inspired several vases echoing Bernard Leach’s observation: ‘the night sky and hedgerows seem to tell of Infinity’.

Moving beyond the appeal of idyllic St Ives, is a triple-gourd vase titled ‘Lest we Forget’, in which Helen salutes our unsung hero/ines: street cleaners, guerilla gardeners and charity volunteers - without whom the town would be neither beautiful nor orderly.

In the Artist’s Words

“I undertook this residency intending to remain receptive to the unknown which a new environment can present. Inhabiting openness without the need to control, the artist seeks to catch the eye and soul off-guard and access fresh, surprising ways of being and making.”