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Gabriel’s work is difficult to
photograph but it is hoped that the images below at least give a flavour of
the work. |
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When deciding to go ahead with the second
exhibition of Frank Fidler’s paintings at the gallery I had no idea what to
show alongside them. Then purely by chance Rosemonde Nairac, friend and
occasional exhibitor at the gallery, came by to tell me about Gabriel
Sempill’s recent ceramic creations. They just seemed perfect, even though
they are unlike anything that the Harlequin has shown before. Gabriel is one of five daughters of the
aeronautical engineer, Lord Sempill, and his wife, Cecelia Dunbar Kilburn.
Her mother was herself an artist and co-founder of Dunbar Hay Ltd., a
pioneering company that commissioned and sold the work of young artists and
designers, such as Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden, in the 1930s. Gabriel has inherited a number of her parents’
talents and attended Colchester School of Art during the 1960s, where she
honed her drawing skills under the direction of John Nash. Following this
with a stint at the Royal College of Art, where she studied Industrial
Ceramic Design, she went on to pursue a varied career that included being a
draftsman at the Natural History Museum, a professional lute maker and
restoring an early 19th century carousel for the National Trust. Since the
1980s Gabriel has concentrated on drawing and printmaking with a number of
solo exhibitions around London as well as taking part in mixed exhibitions at
the Mall Galleries, the Beardsmore Gallery and the
Royal Academy. In the summer of 2006 she reached a point where she felt she
needed to do something different. A potter friend suggested that she played
around with some clay to see what happened and as
Gabriel says, “these are the results of my play!” There has been a gap of 40 years or so since her Royal College
days but she always remembers being fascinated by clay even before that,
recalling that she “loved the fingerprints on the petals of Meissen flowers
she saw as a child”. Although this memory has had an effect on her current
work, it is her period of isolation from the ceramic world that is perhaps
her greatest strength. She mentions the “repertoire of natural history in my
head”, the botanical shapes in the work of the Badia brothers to be seen on
the balconies of the Casa Mila and the hammer marks on other Gaudi ironwork
in Barcelona, which may have been significant in her thought processes during
the making of her ceramics. However, as she states this does not “explain why
I make something”. Like everything that
Gabriel does, these ceramics show her passion and sincerity and their
individuality means that they should not be ignored. |
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