LAWSON OYEKAN, TRIAL WITH LIGHT

Lawson Oyekan was born in Lambeth in 1961 and grew up in Nigeria, studying first applied chemistry and then fine and applied arts at The Polytechnic, Ibadan. He returned to study further at the Central School of Art and Design and then the Royal College of Art, winning the Darwin Scholarship Award. He describes his working practice as ‘nomadic’ with studios in London and Vosges, France. He is also an acclaimed teacher with a long record of international exhibitions and awards.

The Crafts Study Centre Acquisition Committee has recently rewritten elements of policy to address the issue that the collection and archives are fundamentally composed of work by makers who are English and white. The collections do not fully represent cultural diversity and policy has changed to stress the need to collect to address this significant gap. The recent Maak sale from the John Driscoll collection gave us the chance to bid for a porcelain bowl by Lawson Oyekan and we were delighted to acquire it with the support of the Arts Council England/ V & A Museum Purchase Fund and Art Fund. It is the first work by Oyekan to enter the ceramics collection.

It’s a small work, perforated and punctured like many in Oyekan’s repertoire, made in the form of an open basket. It is akin to earthy materials, without the customary perfected sheen and polish of porcelain. Oyekan made a series with the title Trial with Light from 1993-96 and it included much larger columnar vessels in stoneware, in white or terracotta clays. Alison Britton wrote in 1995 that ‘across all the works the strongest impression is of the trail left by an energetic hand. The hand making a bold raw gesture, like the sweep of a brush or the slash of a knife, combined with the loving attentiveness of fingertips slowly pinching and piecing together’. (Ceramic Review 156 November December 1995 p. 11).

Oyekan has said that his work ‘explores the physical drama of earth’s complexity, the rhythms of the evolution of my own consciousness and the extraordinary challenge to open a platform of dialogue with the diverse identities that make modern Britain’. It is therefore a potent and symbolic first ceramic item to set the Crafts Study Centre on a new, but long overdue, strategy of collecting.

Purchased in 2022 with the support of Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Fund and Art Fund.