Unforeseen Events

Britton collaborated with Norwegian artist Marit Tingleff in this duo, to extend the dialogue between their ceramic works, continuing an international rapport. In 2007 Tingleff and Britton were part of a much larger exhibition END, which had ben coordinated over some years between 7 British and Scandinavian artists. It was shown first in Copenhagen at the Kunstindustrimuseet and then at Bomuldsfabriken Kunsthall, Arendal,Norway. For Unforeseen Events, working out of sight of each other’s researches (hence the title) both were engaged with material risks in making fresh discoveries in form and surface, and an investigation of the breadth of expression achievable with a limited palette of pigment and glaze. Allusions to tableware were common to both, beyond the context of function. Tingleff’s six huge rectangular plates, e.g.170 x 92 cm, painted with slips and glaze, were wall mounted on shelves. Britton’s fifteen pieces were smaller in scale and greater in formal variety, occupying two expansive tables/plinths .The significance and innovation of this series of pots in the commitment she shows to stretching the idea of the container, was rooted in the following: Ongoing glaze experiments, fluidity, transparency, altering slips underneath. Green and yellow key colours, also a new manganese brown used with yellow, and kinds of white. New variations of formal types: jug, jar,plate, also a channeling double pot form, changed by a cone-section base. Jugs flaring and tapering, forms made by a newly defined curving slab process Plates as platforms, straight-sided ovals, deep hollows; oblong plates with oval centre fields, and exaggerated relief ornaments eg Squirl Scaling up as skill grows with new means of glazing initiated in 2007. A gallery essay by Edmund de Waal was also available online. Reviewed in Ceramic Review, issue 241,Jan/Feb 2010, later published in Norwegian. Pieces from both Britton and Tingleff from Unforeseen Events were illustrated in De Waal’s The Pot Book, Phaidon , 2011