Inside Out

Andy Christian August 2016

The bald stone outcrops of the moorland, the pitted tracks that wind their way between dwellings, the coarse grass, sand and pebbles contrast with rapidly changing seas and skies. Such exterior textures are echoed within the house and studio. Painted wood allows grain to emerge and the interiors are unfussy, workaday and honest. Exceptionally a modern pool table spans the French windows that let the coastal light stream in. One of Jason Wason’s preoccupations has been with symmetry. He is fascinated by the trajectories of balls struck at angles. Edges, textures and symmetry are not the only concerns in his making but they seem to be constants. He is an emotional and political man and recognises the changing roles these too play in his making.

The edges of his works are very carefully considered. When we have looked down into one of his shallow bowls we should also appreciate the side view; the way it sits or stands upon a surface. There are squared forms too, windows to an interior world and wide bellied urn forms with dark interiors. His clay work is concise, precise even. Boundaries are sharp and clear. He is firmly in charge of his material, it is not allowed to stray. Within these artfully circumscribed forms he gives more expression to surfaces. These surfaces are scratched, ingrained, tooled, burnished and eroded but never glazed. He has rejected the way glaze clothes clay in a glassy layer thus inevitably his surfaces absorb light rather than reflecting it. Even when he dusts and rubs in a bit of gold it is only allowed to glow quietly, never to shine out lustily. By using the textures and his own carefully concocted mixtures of metallic oxides with other clay slips, each work has integrity. It is rather like a painter wisely using a limited palette to achieve coherence and balance. Textures are further enhanced by his habit of firing pieces up to six times to achieve surfaces that are enriched by heat and fire. I am sure the accidents of firing have occasionally added the kilns blessings to exteriority but of the many ceramists I have known he is notable as a controller of his chosen materials. Chance is not an option he generally tolerates.

In ‘Inside Out’ there are works which still seem like possible artefacts which have slipped undamaged from the sands of some refined lost culture. Their refinement suggests a civilization of discriminating taste and technical mastery. What we know is they have evolved from the conscious and unconscious mind of a contemporary artist. Jason Wason was a great traveller and he has absorbed what he has seen so profoundly that it has become his own. It is possible to recognise in an elaborate lid the evocative profile of a temple stupa but most references are deeply distilled. In this exhibition cylinders of clay are decorated with zigzag marks inferring tribal ritual marks or the skin of an adder.

These are more primal expressions than is usual in his work. The boat-like forms are peopled with figures of refugees trying desperately to find a compassionate land. It is in these boats and cylinders that a more emotional aspect seems evident. In these we are allowed closer to the excitability of the man. Occasionally a title such as ‘The Devil’s Box of Tricks’ brings up a story. A Christian bishop endeavours to explain the presence of fossils in a world he proclaims as merely four thousand years old by declaring they were put there by the devil to trick us. Jason conceals the fossils beneath a lid and they stand as a riposte to blind fundamentalists of all kinds.

Jason Wason’s work is architectural. It may be scaled for interiors but it references large buildings as well as intimate dwellings like the carapaces of soldier crabs or armoured helmets. He manages to integrate inferences of the surfaces of reptile skins, of smooth slate and wrought metal with crisp and concise forms. He ranges between works which tug at our common Pantheistic tribal origins to those which set themselves firmly in a modern, agnostic, abstract world. And of course each enriches the other. We are left in a tangle because some of those Pantheistic symbols are the origins of contemporary abstraction. In his studio by the sea in Cornwall Jason Wason might easily have slipped into a reverie of rural remoteness but instead he has continued to view our world and its injustices with acuteness and occasionally with bright anger. ’Inside Out’ embraces stylites – the ancient pillar saints and it recognises the desperate plight of contemporary refugees whose homes have been bombed to rubble by despots. It sets before us the shield like bowls and open or lidded vessels that are his consistent but developing focus. His restlessness will never allow him to stand still. There are always more angles to be pursued, more things to sharpen his eyes and more to exercise his compassion and his changing horizons.

This year is his 70th, the last 42 years of which, have been spent working with clay. The journey continues.

PUBLICATION: Inside Out

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Purchase the Jason Wason Inside Out exhibition publication for £15 including p&p (£20 worldwide).

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UK £15.00 GBP Worldwide £20.00 GBP