Imperfect Offerings looks at post-pandemic human connection through ceramics, to August 22
The Richmond Art Gallery group exhibition features wares embodying function and beauty by three B.C. artists
Ocean Scars by Naoko Fukumaru.
Richmond Art Gallery presents Imperfect Offerings, a group exhibition on display from June 26 to Aug. 22, 2021
THE PANDEMIC, FOR all its terribleness, may had at least one small positive outcome, with people perhaps having gained a deeper appreciation for life’s simple pleasures, like being able to visit a friend over a cup of tea.
Richmond Art Gallery’s new exhibition, Imperfect Offerings, explores, through ceramics, our innate desire to gather.
Curated by gallery director Shaun Dacey, the show features new commissions and works by three B.C. artists.
Naoko Fukumaru is a Kyoto-born, Vancouver-based artist specializing in kintsugi, a 500-year-old Japanese method of restoring damaged ceramics through golden rejoinery. Formerly a professional conservator who worked at the Detroit Institute of Arts Museum and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Fukumaru has been involved in major conservation projects such as Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Fukumaru has also been collaborating with prominent local potters since 2019 to restore, adapt, and reinvent their broken or cracked works. The exhibition presents several works of kintsugi applied to ceramics and glass, representing different cultures and time periods, as well as combinations of natural materials.
Also featured are works by artist-writer Jesse Birch, curator of the Nanaimo Art Gallery, and potter Glenn Lewis, an influential contemporary ceramicist who was among the generation of artists who apprenticed under British legend Bernard Leach in the early 1960s.
The group show reflects the post-pandemic era’s caution return to socialization and connecting with others.
“As summer emerges, there is a renewed sense of optimism for things we’ve lost in the past year: shared meals, gatherings with friends and family, moments of human connection,” Dacey said in a release. “Imperfect Offerings celebrates the social rituals we’ve all sorely missed, and optimistically looks to a future when we can gather once more. This exhibition brings together objects that serve as conduits for intimate care and aesthetic play, exploring how people can find new ways to connect and collaborate during the pandemic.”
The ceramics in Imperfect Offerings embody function and beauty, with many of the pieces being utilitarian, meant to be used to serve tea, share food, and drink from.
For Imperfect Offerings, Birch has presented a new teapot set with cups that he gifted to Richmond Art Gallery; once the exhibition closes, the set will join the gallery’s everyday kitchen wares rather than entering the collection. Birch aims to help facilitate future social encounters in the space, while also contributing to the care of those who work to make culture happen. The set has also been touched by kintsugi: the teapot lid cracked during the original firing; Fukumaru repaired it.
Pending COVID-19 provincial health orders, the Richmond Art Gallery (the only public gallery in Richmond) will host a public talk between Fukumaru, Lewis, and curator Makiko Hara on July 31. The discussion will focus on the critical 2004 Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery exhibition Thrown and pieces from the show that were later restored with kintsugi. There will also be a Tea and Talks series, potentially using Birch’s teapot set during the exhibition’s final week in August.
Visit Richmond Art Gallery for more information.
Rose Photos With Mended Pots by Glenn Lewis.
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