Jhana Millers Gallery is pleased to announce that they are now representing Jaime Jenkins.
Jaime lives and creates in Tauranga, and grew up on an orchard down the road from her now-studio.
Jenkins hand-crafts ceramic pieces that are not confined to any definitions of what clay can and should do. Her artworks teeter on the edges of functionality, fragility and frivolity and often take on organic, malleable, and fluid forms. Things that are not traditionally made with the hard and fragile stoneware, such as ceramic hanging mobiles or bells, are frequent subjects in Jenkins’ practice — works that also create movement and sound.
The colours in the hand-blown slips Jenkins uses push the boundaries of earthy and celestial; cornflower and Egyptian blues cover the surface of a pillar, and an olive green is used for a ceramic resembling an amoeba.
Jenkins has always been interested in making her own versions of things. Her first foray into ceramics was figurative (making animals and rocks), but then she turned to domestic ware —functional pieces which allowed her to develop her skills and process for making. From here, Jenkins turned back to making sculptures and used these two past phases to inform her contemporary work, an example being her star-shaped plinths and ceramic tapestries.
In early 2020 Jenkins exhibited Break a Fig as part of the ‘Fired Up: Festival of Ceramics’ with us at Jhana Millers Gallery. Other recent exhibitions of Jenkins’ work were at the Dowse Art Museum, Wellington (Dirty Ceramics, 2020), SPA_CE Gallery, Napier (on the verge of blue, 2019), Michael Lett and Ivan Anthony, Auckland (Gestamtkünstwerk, 2019), and Jhana Millers Gallery (Salt Pillars, 2019 and Summer Selection, 2020).
Currently, Jenkins is creating a collection of work for her solo exhibition, Stone Age, with us in October 2020 (this was originally intended for the Auckland Art Fair in April/May). She is also working on a collaboration of ceramics and painting with friend and fellow artist, Séraphine Pick.