MIKE DODD: new pots

Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham: 26 November – 24 December 2011
Goldmark Gallery is very pleased to announce the date of celebrated potter Mike Dodd's exhibition of eagerly awaited new pots, which is to take place 26 November to 24 December.

Perhaps one of the most accessible and user-friendly of the UK's finest potters, Dodd's work comes from the heart of the kitchen and the beauty of the countryside.
Dodd’s range of what he terms ‘general purpose’ domestic ware is the perfect addition to kitchen and table. He makes baking dishes and casseroles perfect for taking straight from oven to table, large bowls for mixing or serving salads and smaller bowls from which to eat soup or noodles. For him, his pots’ function is “firstly to enrich, to keep alive a sense of beauty, to touch feeling as a counter or balance to reason” and that “as probably the most tactile of all the crafts, not to be useable would deny the intimacy necessary for ‘presence’ to emerge in everyday use.”
Combining his fascination with making his glazes from locally sourced materials with functionality, Penlee Stone, Somerset Basalt and River Iron are just a few of the rich glazes that work to enhance his simple, unfussy forms. His pots are tactile, intimate and accessible. The handles on his mugs and jugs invite you to hold and pour, the texture of his crackle glazed pots is alluring, the soft black of his basalt glaze contrasts dramatically with the blue tinged high silica ash often poured over the neck and shoulders of his bottles. Paddling on jars leaves indentations in which ash glazes pool.
Recently he has reintroduced the use of porcelain to his studio, a material he hasn’t worked with regularly since the 1970s, using a palette of cool blue celadon and soft ash glazes on the beautifully faceted lidded boxes and delicately fluted vases.
Inspired by Bernard Leach and mentored by Donald Potter as a schoolboy, Dodd went on to study medicine at Cambridge but after graduating he abandoned it all to return to his first love of pottery, taking a post-graduate course in ceramics in London. He has worked as a professional potter since 1968, becoming one of the most important potters working today. He currently lives and works in Somerset, producing his beautiful pots at the Dove Pottery Workshops.
Dodd is a vegan with a strong commitment to animal welfare, conservation and environmental issues. In 1979he was approached by Survival International and Oxfam to build a climbing kiln in the Peruvian jungle. Dodd took his partner and young daughter and spent 6 months there working on the Amuesha Indian Project, set up to assist the indigenous people and their community.
He has held workshops at Landshut College for Ceramics in Germany and the Golden Bridge Pottery in Pondicherry, India. He has exhibited extensively throughout the UK and his work is held in collections at the V&A, British Crafts Council and Ulster Museum, Belfast.


Free entry. Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham, Rutland. 01572 821 424. Open Monday to Saturday
9.30am - 5.30pm, Sunday and Bank Holidays 2.30pm - 5.30pm www.modernpots.com