Northern Lights | Gunilla Maria Åkesson, Jussi Ojala and Maria Kristofersson

About

Gunilla Maria Åkesson's vessels are slowly constructed, "a daily meditation", where she seeks to discover "the potential of the work I have in front of me". This is a process of seeking to find out what story the pot has to tell and can take 3 to 4 weeks per piece, a method which leads her to produce work in series, using "the same kind of basic shapes that in some way have always existed." 

Maria Kristofersson trained in drawing and painting and was initially not attracted to ceramics, but the material seduced her: "the clay provides both resistance and guidance." She works with box-like forms which she describes as having "both space and body, an inside and an outside. [They] can be seen as three-dimensional drawings." Her twice-fired unglazed earthenware pieces specifically resist function. 

Jussi Ojala's path has been an idiosyncratic one. After a few years as an apprentice and a year of education, working with wood firing, in his own words: "since 1985 I've found my own way through struggles and experiments." His work is inspired both by nature and seasonality and by the material; the processes and experiments. The resulting objects ooze with an energy seeming to burst out of the form. Rupturing glazes obscure the outlines of shapes that are themselves warped and trembling.

Exhibition sponsored by The Hargreaves and Ball Trust