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Leora Honeyman


Maker











enquiries:
gallery fumi

Artist Statement

 


Leora Honeyman is a speculative artist centred in the crafts of ceramics and glass. 


Her work makes use of the embedded languages of functional objects to imply parallel cultural trajectories . Her recent collections respond to imagined missing legacies, presenting magical items that are intended to provoke consideration of the cultural absentia resulting from the holocaust of the witches. The usefulness of her objects is frequently unclear such as in her “Nectar Vessels” and the “Djinn jars” whilst hinting at unfamiliar cultural practice, with the intention of prompting the viewer to question their expectations and to spotlight ‘other-hoods’.


Working across multiple processes, she employs her acquired skills, craftsmanship and empathic understanding of materials in unusual ways to produce unexpected results. Digitally produced geometries are subjected to unpredictable, alchemic, material transformations in order to synthesise organic influences, while pattern and purpose are transplanted from their usual associations offering end results which sit outside convention and further encourage the otherworldly interpretation of the work.

About

 



Leora was born in Zimbabwe. Exposure to the extraordinary ecology of that land and to the complex values arising from the intersection of human cultures continues to influence her work.


She carved out her first career creating psychedelic environments for clubs and festivals during the 90s allowing her to develope a broad and varied material fluency from which she progressed to a formal training and subsequent practice in architectural design.


After taking a break from her practice to raise a family, she returned in 2019 with a new focus on ceramics, pursuing this at the Royal College of Art. Supported by the prestigious QEST scholarship to complete this MA and undertake further trainings, she emerged as a note-able maker of collectible design, winning the British Ceramics Bienalle ‘Fresh Talent’ award during the course of the M. A. and subsequently being featured in a number of craft publications. She has exhibited at prestigeous events, internationally such as PAD design and Design Miami and is represented by Gallery Fumi in London.

CV

 

Exhibitions


2023 - Design Miami, Gallery Fumi, Miami (curated selection)

2023 - London Design Week, Tin Man Art, Cromwell Place, London (curated selection)

2023 - British Ceramics Biennial (residency show)

2023 - Fumi 15, Curated by Libby Sellars (curated selection)

2023 - Summer Show, Gallery Fumi (curated selection)

2023 - Winter Show, Gallery Fumi (curated selection)

2023 - The Box, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery (curated selection)

2022 - Hand made, Gallery Fumi (curated selection)

2022 - The Amber Rooms, The Round House, London (curated selection)

2022 - PAD Design, Gallery Fumi, London (curated selection)

2022 - Summer Show, Gallery Fumi (curated selection)

2022 - Formed with Future Heritage, Design Centre Chelsea (curated selection)

2022 - Cluster Crafts (curated selection)

2022 - Royal College of Art Graduation Show (group show)

2022 - Artefact, Design Centre Chelsea (curated selection)

2022 - Melting Point, Home of Preston Fitzgerald (group show)

2022 - A Line Made by Walking, Upper Gelbenkian Gallery, Royal College of Art (curated selection)

2022 - Breaking with Tradition: British Ceramics Biennial, Burton at Bideford (curated

selection)

2021 - British Ceramics Biennial, Fresh Talent (Awarded), Stoke on Trent,(curated

selection)

2021 - The Power of Material: From Virtual to Physical, Design Museum (group show)

2021 - Sketch, 11 Avenue Studios, London (group show)

2020 - Royal College of Art WIP show (group show)




Awards and Prizes


2021 - Fresh Talent (Winner), British Ceramics Bienalle

2021 - Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust Scholar 2021

Residencies


2022-23 - British Ceramics Biennial Residency


Education


2019 - 2022 MA Royal College of Art Ceramics and Glass

2000 - 2003 BA University of Brighton Interior Architecture


Press


2023 - Crafts Magazine, “New Talent” Issue 297, p43

2023 - Ceramic review, “One to Watch” Issue 321, p66

2022 - Craft Magazine Online, https://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/stories/new-wave-12-craftgraduates-that-need-to-be-on-your-radar

2022 - London Art Roundup https://www.londonartroundup.com/reviews/rca-graduateshow-2022

2022 - Emerging Potters Magazine https://issuu.com/googlemail9177/docs/ep_july_-_sept_2022/s/16316032

2021 - UK Ceramics Org https://www.ukceramics.org/news/bcb-broadcasts-the-winners-ofaward-and-unique-for-the-2021-competition/

2021 - Emerging Potters Magazine https://issuu.com/googlemail9177/docs/em_24_-

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Objects as World-bridging Devices



If pattern, materiality and purpose imbed culture into objects then assumptions about a culture can be fabulated as well as deducted by the objects they offer as traces.

Allistic-white-male-capatalist-colonialism (can someone find a snappy phrase for this?) had a tendency to project its own fairly monodimensional readings onto the artefacts it collected, leading to cultural editing and misunderstanding. The absorbtion of other cultures was therefore done in a way as to prune them of important and valuable nuances. 

The result was a distorted view of the whole; offering a patchwork of inauthenticity and a population of misfits. A tucked and pleated image.

The rupture* of the seams in turn offers a reveal. The ability to see the whole picture rather than a tailored fit around the median form by peeking between the threads at the still-fresh-fabric that completes our various othernesses.

Objects and artefacts re-emerge to match wider ways of being. Still coy, a surface is offered as a “scrying table”. Maybe it is or isn’t. It is not certain. The statement is ready to recoil at an instant behind a title-shell of perhaps-irony. Or to offer a split in the veils for those who know.

*Decolonisation in its broadest meaning has created a cultural rupture.