Gilles le Corre creates vessels and bowls on the wheel, manipulating and incising marks to the clay to give a subtle, tactile surface. His new body of work, exhibited at Contemporary Applied Arts for London Craft Week, embraces a new development in his working process: sgraffito drawing into a layer of porcelain slip, which is then filled in with a darker pigment to create a soft, carved line that recalls etching and the graphic lines of modernist artists like Paul Klee. The use of heavily textured clay, full of iron beads and sand from an open coal mine where the clay has been untouched for generations, gives the work an ancient quality, reminiscent of prehistoric carvings and the repetitive hatched patterns found in nature.
The forms of the vessels are purposely simplified to allow the surface texture to express itself. Throwing marks are intentionally left in the finished pieces, the making process creating a ribbed effect that enhances the fluidity of the forms. Recent explorations using textured clays that still contain many of their impurities brings an unpredictable challenge in making the work, adding a mysterious and tactile quality to the surface of the pots.
Gilles studied ceramics at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in London under Ian Auld and spent time assisting Janice Tchalenko. He established his own pottery workshop in Oxford, where he now lives.
See Gilles' new work at our exhibition 'Traces: Imagined Histories in Clay, Silver and Thread' for London Craft Week 2024 from 13 - 19 May at our Marylebone gallery.
