- Description
Description
Join us at Kettle’s Yard for a panel discussion relating to our current exhibition Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery, with writer Ali Smith, artist-filmmaker Sarah Wood, Senior Curator of Modern & Contemporary Applied Arts at The Fitzwilliam Museum, Helen Ritchie and exhibition curator Eliza Spindel. In this panel discussion the speakers will discuss themes emerging from the exhibition from a variety of perspectives.
£12 (£10 Friends, £5 Students), booking required
About Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery
This major exhibition celebrates one of the most significant potters of the twentieth century, offering a rare opportunity to experience Lucie Rie’s (1902–1995) ground-breaking practice. The first survey of her pottery in the UK in over 20 years, Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery features more than 100 works, including bowls, vases, tableware and buttons.
Born in Vienna, Rie’s early pots from the 1920s and 30s are infused with clarity and innovation, characteristics that informed her artistic approach throughout her working life. In 1938 she emigrated to London to escape Nazi persecution, a turning point in her life and work. As one of a small number of independent female potters working in Britain after the war, Rie was to forge her own path at odds with prevailing trends. Her remarkable body of work continues to inspire today.
About Ali Smith
Ali Smith is the author of many works of fiction, including Companion Piece, the Seasonal Quartet and How to Be Both, which won the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize, and the Costa Novel of the Year Award. Her work has been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize four times. Born in Inverness, Scotland, she now lives in Cambridge.
About Sarah Wood
Sarah Wood is an artist-filmmaker based in Cambridge. Her video works focus on the found object, particularly still and moving archival images. She interrogates these documents as a way of questioning of the relationship between historical narrative and individual memory.
In 2020, Sarah Wood’s film ‘Here is Elsewhere’ screened at Kettle’s Yard. Watch the film here.
About Helen Ritchie
Helen Ritchie is Senior Curator of Modern & Contemporary Applied Arts at The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Her research interests include British Studio Pottery, contemporary crafts and European design post-1850. She has worked with a number of leading contemporary ceramic artists, including Magdalene Odundo, Jennifer Lee, Elspeth Owen and Matt Smith. Alongside her curatorial work, Helen is currently undertaking a PhD in the Department of History of Art at the University of Cambridge, researching the studio ceramics of Norah Braden (1901-2001) and other interwar women potters.
About Eliza Spindel
Eliza Spindel is Assistant Curator at Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, with responsibility for the display and care of the House and collection.
Access
This talk is in the Ede Room on the first floor which is fully wheelchair accessible via a lift. The galleries on the ground floor are fully wheelchair accessible. They can be accessed easily from the entrance area by steps or a ramps.
