Sculpture, stoneware, dark sprayed with ash glaze and colourants, made by Kato Kiyoyuki, Japan (Seto), 1980

Sculpture, tall form of square horizontal cross-section tapering from base to top; openings in front revealing internal construction; irregular fins and protrusions on all facets, sides in particular.

Metallic oxides and ash glaze are applied in a seemingly spontaneous but in reality quite controlled manner involving the use of an air-gun. Reduction firing is carried out in a gas kiln. Although Kato is extremely fluent on the wheel and is similarly accomplished at coil-building, his greatest talent lies in his facility as a slab-builder. The work was constructed from numerous sheets of clay which were scratched, pricked, perforated and torn to produce a complex and richly textured structure. The tall finned shape is reminiscent of Yayoi period bronze bells known as dotaku, the forms and primitive decoration of which have long been sources of inspiration for Kato and other artists. The inclusion of internal partitions and panels reflects a parallel interest in ruined buildings and similarly evocative remnants of human civilisation.

Purchased from the maker.

Born as the heir to a long-established tile-making business in Seto, Kato studied ceramics at high school. His main interest lay in painting and sculpture, however, and it was only when he was in his late twenties that he began to work in ceramics. He made his submission to the Nitten exhibition in 1958. Having set out with an interest in producing well-designed utilitarian ceramics in keeping with the principles of the then newly established Japan Craft Design Association, he soon turned his hand to the making of sculptural ceramics. Kato's development as a ceramic sculptor owed much to his friendship with Teshigahara Sofu (1900-79), the former head of the Sogetsu school of flower-arranging. Rather as avant-garde tendencies in the world of flower-arranging led Hayashi Yasuo and other members of the Shikokai to produce so-called "objet" flower vases' in the late 1940s and 1950s, Teshigahara's experimental interests encouraged Kato to explore his sculptural ambitions in vessel as well as non-vessel formats.

FE.14-1989