Jane Cairns

Credit to Jo Underhill Photographer

Jane Cairns is a London based ceramicist.  Coming to ceramics as a second career she graduated from University of Westminster (Harrow) in 2011. A selected member of the Craft Potter’s Association and a founder member of haptic/tacit her studio is on the banks of the Thames. 

 Jane’s work is about recognising a quiet beauty in the ordinary, the unnoticed and the overlooked.   Living in the city this is often found in apparently insignificant details of the built environment and the urban edgelands – the negative space on a wall where something has been removed, the sculptural qualities of abandoned industrial objects, weathered surfaces marked with wear, traces of things gone.  

She translates what she notices, the visual language of functional things and the store of material references all around us, into sculptural objects and wall panels.  Re-presented like this the source is close enough to seem familiar but with enough distance that they become abstract and occupy their own space

Using processes and materials that allow for an element of chance her ceramics play with the balance of unexpected variance and creative control.