Ten leading artists, Ai Weiwei, Jonathan Anderson, Rana Begum, Edmund de Waal, Antony Gormley, Callum Innes, Jennifer Lee, Cornelia Parker, Vicken Parsons & Caroline Walker, have been creating limited edition sets of buttons in support of Kettle’s Yard. The buttons will be displayed at LOEWE’s flagship London store from 11 – 15 October 2023.
The project draws inspiration from the exhibition, ‘Lucie Rie: The Adventure of Pottery’, recently at Kettle’s Yard and from 14 July 2023 – 7 January 2024 at the Holburne Museum in Bath. In 1938, Lucie Rie fled her home in Vienna for London to escape the Nazi persecution of Jewish people. During the war, unable to get a licence to make pots, Rie turned to making ceramic buttons for the fashion industry, experimenting on a miniature scale with new forms and coloured glazes.
Porcelain button forms have become tiny canvases for Caroline Walker, who has individually painted each one to give the illusion of classic tortoiseshell buttons. Working in oil paint, she has created six variations that simulate the mottled appearance of horn. The four holes on each button are painted, with shadows suggesting the effect of light on the surface of these trompe l’oeil objects.
Walker is renowned for her paintings which illuminate the experience of women, revealing the diverse social, cultural and economic conditions which shape society. She focuses in on spaces and activities, both in the workplace and the home, which are rarely depicted in contemporary art. The painterly skill of her compositions places her in an art historical lineage stretching from the Dutch Golden Age to Manet and Degas and onwards.
Callum Innes has created a series of buttons in a style closely related to his abstract paintings and prints. The form of the buttons is based on objects in Innes’ home and studio in Edinburgh. The overall shape is cast from the thumb aperture of a vintage wooden artist’s palette and the relief on the button is an imprint of a 4,000-year-old Persian sculpture onto the porcelain forms.
The three colour variations of the buttons produce intriguing effects. The black and white buttons have a simple, bold appearance. The green-hued buttons, created by applying several layers of glaze from the East Lothian area in Scotland, take on a metallic look. The luminous lilac-blue buttons capture Innes’ technique of establishing a play between painting and un-painting.
Callum Innes is renowned for a distinctive process of addition and subtraction, exploring the varied effects of painting a surface and then thinning or dissolving the original colour.
You will be able to buy the limited edition button cards from the Kettle’s Yard shop from 11 October 2023.
All proceeds from the sale of Artists Buttons will support the new Jim and Helen Ede Fund, a five-year initiative that aims to increase Kettle’s Yard’s endowment and enable further engagement with artists, local communities and young people.
For more information, please visit the link below.
