The Beauty of Communication

If Kitty Shepherd and her daughter were not at St Ives and informed us of the Tate , I would not have known Lucie Rie and I would not have found me in front of the images of a beautiful exhibition in Tokyo at Issey Miyake's 21-21, called U-Tsu-Wadi. In addition I discovered the works of Jennifer Lee and Ernst Gamperl.

Maybe I will be working in museums and the way to display the workshow of art fascinates me, but this exhibition curated by the fashion designer Miyake and by the architect Tadao Ando is wonderful. When you find something beautiful is nice to communicate it to others.

Thanks Kitty

"Lucie Rie is one of the fortunate grandes dames of design whose contribution was recognised whilst she was still alive. Indeed the Austrian-born, London-based ceramicist was actually made a dame in 1991 for a lifetime’s service to the arts.

Yet, barely a decade after her death, her name is far from a household name amongst the design literate today. Perhaps this is due to nothing more than the fact that ceramics are a relatively niche area, falling between art and design. We’re sensing a pleasing surge of interest in her work though, which a new exhibition at Issey Miyake’s 21_21 will bolster.
The exhibition is called U-Tsu-Wa, which means vessels, and brings together around 100 works of Lucie Rie, together with pieces by Scottish ceramicist Jennifer Lee and German woodworker Ernst Gamperl. Miyake enlisted the help of Tadao Ando for the exhibition design and, as you’d imagine with such a pairing of creative heavyweights, the result is surreal and spectacular. Centre stage is a gigantic pool of water on which Rie’s ceramics appear to float, highlighting the delicate fragility of her ceramics.

Miyake is something of a Lucie Rie fanatic and this is the second time he’s showed her work in Tokyo. He first discovered her twenty years ago by accident, stumbling across a book about her in a London bookshop. After visiting her studio he was hooked – ‘upon entering, meeting her and seeing some of her work I sensed ‘this is what it means to create’. I remember feeling energised as well as inspired’". ( text by Wallpaper*)

The Issey Miyake Foundation presented the images of the building called '21_21 Design Sight' designed by Tadao Ando in Tokyo .

Lucie RieBorn in 1902 in Vienna, where she studied at the Kunstwerbeschule under Michael Powolny from 1922 to 1926. In 1938 she moved to London, where she lived in Albion Mews. She opened a pottery and button-making workshop, and was joined in 1946 by Hans Coper. She was knighted an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1968 and Commander in 1981. She was made a Dame in 1991. From 1949 she exhibits her work from in many cities in Europe and America. Her first one-person exhibition was held in Japan at the Sogetsu Gallery, Tokyo and Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, in 1989. In 1990, she stopped making pots. Lucie Rie died in 1995, aged 93.

Jennifer LeeBorn in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 1956. From 1975 to 1979 she studied ceramics and tapestry at Edinburgh College of Art. She then spent eight months on a scholarship to the USA where she researched South-West Indian prehistoric ceramics and visited contemporary West Coast potters. From 1980 to 1983 she continued her work in ceramics at the Royal College of Art in London. Since then she traveled extensively. Jennifer Lee has had retrospective exhibitions of her work at the Röhsska Musset in Göteborg, Sweden in 1993, and the Aberdeen Museum and Art Gallery, Scotland in 1994. Her work is represented in major public collections worldwide, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Jennifer Lee lives and works in London and regularly exhibits worldwide.

Ernst GamperlBorn in Munich, Germany in 1965. After graduating from high school he became a furniture maker apprentice and stumbled on woodturning by chance. Starting out an autodidact, he set up his own workshop in 1990. Ernst Gamperl has exhibited works in all over the world, including “the International Wood Turning Exhibition” (Victoria, Austria) in 1994, a traveling exhibition at Strenesse (Hamburg), Galerie Hilde Leiss in 1998, “Ernst Gamperl Volumes in Wood” at MDS-G in Tokyo in 2000, and so on. His objects are found in renowned museums all over the world, such as the Museum of Applied Art, Frankfurt and Fond national d’Art contemporain, Paris. He earned awards from the Danner Foundation in 1993 and 1999, and has winning prizes and awards as far afield as Germany, the USA and Australia.

P.S.

Help me! please correct my bad English. As said the grandfather of Jim : no "bad English" bat "Inglese di merda"