Ewen Henderson(1934-2000)

6 May - 5 June 2014

15 Royal Arcade, 28 Old Bond Street, London W1S 4SP+44 (0) 20 7491 1706 | mail@erskinehallcoe.com | www.erskinehallcoe.com

Sack Form, c.199068 x 29 x 24 cmEH-0013

We called him “Toad” -- just five minutes being driven by him would explain why! Irascible, irritable, inspiring, brilliant.

His views on the art world could make you laugh -- or cry -- or open up whole new vistas.Sometimes all three.

He was quick to damn others but would then produce agenerous and enlightening assessment of a fellow artist.Or musician.Or composer.

His passion for megaliths -- trips to Avebury and the Rollright Stones in north Oxfordshire. And constantly observing and absorbing, interpreting and analysing. It all came out in the work.And what work!

A phone call: “Come round and see what I’ve just taken out of the kiln”. Or sitting in the first floor room at Cliff Road, surrounded by ceramics of all shapes and sizes.And always keen to talk about them.

One day: “Do you fancy a “smashing session?” -- appraising old works and deciding their fate.I rescued one, even though he wanted me to drop it on the ground. I treasure it.And I treasured him too.

Tim SayerBBC Journalist

My Friend Ewen Henderson

Zig-zag Folding Form, 1990s40 x 45 x 40 cmEH-0016

Untitled, 199366.7 x 101.5 cmacrylic & collage

on paperEH-0089

Large Form, 1980s55 x 44 x 30 cmEH-0086

Title, datesize cmstock ref

Megalithic Energy, 199384 x 118.5 cm

acrylic on paperEH-0088

Buttressed Form, 1980s49 x 43 x 32 cmEH-0017

Upright Form, c. 199070 x 40 x 21 cmEH-0014

Skull Form, 199023 x 38 x 28 cmEH-0022

Buttressed Form, 1980s36 x 38 x 30 cm

EH-0019

Upright Form, c. 199074 x 40 x 25 cmEH-0015

Open Dish, c. 199013 x 33 x 36 cmEH-0023

“An aural instinct compels me to look up. There, at 5000 feet, are 5000 birds, fellow Londoners. Without warning, some leave the main flock, and in lines and columns execute the best drawing I have ever seen - as good as Lascaux. I simply want to make images of this quality, if possible I would like them to be word-proof.”

Ewen Henderson

Manorbier Bay, 200042 x 118.5 cm

charcoal on paperEH-0090

Ewen Henderson

“I fell in love with both the material and the vessel as a magical form; but it was a long time before I realised how I wanted to use it ... I was seduced by the alchemy of change where you take a material ... and it is transmogrified into something else.”

Born in Staffordshire in 1934, Henderson became interested in painting and sculpture while working for a timber company in Cardiff and started attending evening classes at the local art school. In 1964 Henderson began a foundation course at Goldsmiths College in London where he first encountered clay. Later he would study ceramics under, among others, Hans Coper and Lucie Rie, at the Camberwell School of Art. But he always made time to draw and paint. He graduated in 1968 and continued his studies at Edinburgh College of Art before returning to London.

Henderson very soon left the wheel behind and moved to the freedom of hand-building. Throughout his career he explored clay as a medium in its own right, and said of his work that:

“It explores the significance of what is broken, torn or cut, the ability of single or multiple forms to speak of either compression or expansion, flatness or fullness. It is a kind of drawing in three dimensions. I start with fragments - familiar, found, improvised - and then build up to complex structures that invite the observer to complete the circuit, so to speak, by considering such matters as memory, invention and metaphor.”

In parallel with ceramics his passion for painting continued throughout his career, with watercolours, gouaches and collages becoming increasingly inseparable from his ceramics.

Ancient cultures, geological forms and landscapes were persistent influences during his career - Avebury, Eden Valley in Cumbria, the Rollright Stones in north Oxfordshire, Orkney, and Manorbier in Pembrokeshire where he had a home for the last year of his life.

Selected Public Collections

Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Wales; Adelaide Art Gallery, Australia; Stedelijk Museum, The Netherlands; Ulster Museum, Northern Ireland; Municipal Museum of Plymouth, England; Australian National Gallery, Australia; National Museum of Wales, Cardiff; Museum of Decorative Arts, Denmark; Glasgow City Art Gallery, Scotland; Kyoto Museum of Modern Art, Japan; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Los Angeles County Museum, USA; Cleveland Gallery, Middlesbrough; The Palmer Museum, USA; Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, The Netherlands; Museum of Contemporary Art, The Netherlands; The Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park Museum, Japan; National Museum of Stockholm, Sweden; Würtenbergisches Landesmuseum, Germany; The Museum of Modern Art, Japan; Winnipeg Art Gallery, Canada; Museum Bellerive, Switzerland; The Birmingham City Art Gallery, Birmingham; Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA; The Arkansas Arts Centre Decorative Arts Museum, USA; Permanent Collection in Frank Steyaert Museum, Belgium; Frankfurt Museum, Germany.

Solo Exhibitions

All works are laminated stoneware unless otherwise stated

The exhibition will be fully illustrated on our website www.erskinehallcoe.com/exhibitions/ewen-henderson-2014

photography by Michael Harveyprinted at SPM Print

design by fivefourandahalf

© Erskine, Hall & Coe Ltd, 2014

Gallery Opening Hours: Monday to Friday: 10am-6pm

Saturdays (during exhibitions only): 10am-6pm

Front & back cover:Upright Form (detail), c. 1990

70 x 40 x 21 cmEH-0014

Inside front and back cover:Manorbier Bay

photographed by Michael Harvey, April 2014

We would like to thank Tim Sayer and the Estate of Ewen Henderson for their help and assistance

in making this exhibition possible