A Review of Jack Doherty at the National Craft Gallery 2009, by: Michael Moore
Jack Doherty’s Ceramics returned to the Courtyard of the Crafts Council of Ireland for his current solo exhibition, which began in August 2009. They returned in the sense that in 1971 Doherty joined the then named Kilkenny Design Workshops and made Ceramics within sight of the building that is now the National Craft Gallery of Ireland. So in moving forward through nearly forty years of Doherty’s career as a potter and educator, one cannot but remark on his achievements. Chair of the Craft Potters Society, Lecturer of Ceramics at Royal Forest of Dean College, Committee Chair of ‘Ceramic Art London’, to mention just three. This exhibition is a focus on his practice as a potter. So to step into the National Craft Gallery is to step into the world of a Studio Potter laying bear his new work, developed over many years to the point where one encounters the object, refined, resolved and intimate. Three tall collared vessels in Stoneware flanked by two large round Bowls in porcelain were what came into sight. I was immediately taken by the robust quality of the round Bowls, with hues of yellow, green and orange, perhaps not what one presumes to expect from the often contrary material of porcelain. Yet their robustness did not deny them elegance, and the finger print that the process of soda firing imparts on clay surface as it terrorizes that surface during a firing. These works to me seemed to be survivors. But not in a defeated sense, more that they had emerged from the ferocity which fire and soda can impart combined, with dignity, to create absolutely bespoke forms and surfaces. However I recalled I had seen this before. Not these exact warrior vessels but the sight of Jack Doherty’s making process while he presented at the Aberyswyth Clay festival in Wales earlier that summer. Again it was just through a gap in another crowd thronged around his work, I saw the hand of the potter mark the surface. It was a ribbed tool that left a streaking comb-like tear into the clay. A signature mark I felt, both of the maker and of the soda firing process that would no doubt in time, find these calligraphic marks and settle there in, to create the touch that remains to mark the makers impression on these vessels, jars and bowls. This body of Ceramics seemed like they had been made by someone very used to living with and using the objects he makes. There was an intimate understanding of function evidenced in the proportions of these forms and pots described by Martha Donaghy as “quietly demanding attention” (1). Doherty understands the world inside a kiln, where in advance the maker knows perfectly where to leave marks and cuts and indentations, and layers of clay colour, all of which the soda will faithfully detect and embellish. I believe it is that ability to anticipate where these reactions occur that stood out so strongly in this collection of vessels. One witnessed very clear moods in the works in this exhibition. Cool copper greens and yellow to blue bowls in porcelain, dispersed beside warmer, darker stoneware vessels, lids and jars with a coarser surface and tactile appeal. Yet for example consider the one hundred piece ‘Youomis’ wall mounted series. These seemed absolutely radient in their deep brown, white and orange hues, pulsing in colour. Clearly function is of high importance to Jack Doherty, defining in his catalogue four distinct areas of interest in: ‘drinking’, ‘sharing’, ‘display’ and ‘storing’ (2). This indicates a sense of community that supports the curation or layout of this show, where works constantly relate to each other, through form, light and shadow. Towards the front of the gallery, cooler copper porcelain jars and bowls such as ‘Conical Bowl 16’ emited something of a calmer contemplative function. I wondered had climate been considered. Doherty’s studio is coastal, seasonal, facing the Atlantic Ocean. This brings me back to my point about Doherty’s intimate understanding of function and living with the object made by one’s own hand. As Doherty now leads the Leach Pottery in St. Ives, I sense there is a real forward vision in these vessels, bowls and jars, that perhaps peep out from the top floor of the pottery, the very floor where one finds Doherty’s own studio. A glimpse of the sea reflected in the cool copper greens and blues of the porcelain made therein.
Michael Moore, Reader in Fine and Applied Art, Ceramics, University of Ulster