Kardosh Projects at Marion Scott Gallery is honoured to announce an exhibition of works by Wayne Ngan, the internationally recognized ceramicist based on Hornby Island. Opening May 13 and continuing through June 17, Wayne Ngan: Vessel Forms brings together works produced across the last 17 years, showcasing the virtuoso expressiveness of Ngan’s forms and surfaces.

Long recognized as one of Canada’s most important ceramic artists, Wayne Ngan has evolved a distinctive practice marked by technical mastery and a contemporary reinterpretation of forms drawn from both Asian and modern European ceramics and sculptural traditions. Several of the abstract forms included in the exhibition are semi-figurative, as, for example, the tall and slender volumes that variously evoke the standing human figure. Some forms achieve their effect as dramatic silhouettes, recalling Chinese porcelains in the clarity of their presence. The exhibition also includes works of exceptional quiet, including several smaller sculptures that variously evoke the functional form of cup, jug, bowl, and vase.

Eschewing the evenness of an industrial practice, Ngan everywhere celebrates the handmadeness of his forms and surfaces. Many pieces explicitly point to the history of their making, as in one wood-fired vase whose surface carries an indentation made by the pot’s leaning on its side during the firing. Working mostly with materials local to his Hornby Island home on British Columbia’s west coast, Ngan favors glazes that, inspired by the textures and colours of nature, he has created and perfected across many decades of discovery and experimentation.

Wayne Ngan was born in 1937 in Canton, China, immigrating to Canada in 1951. He attended the Vancouver School of Art, graduating with honours in 1963. Thereafter he continued his studies, focusing on the ceramics of China, Japan and Korea. In 1967, Ngan moved to Hornby Island, where he built his own traditional kilns. He was awarded a Governor General’s Commemorative Medal in 1977, and in 1983 he received the Saidye Bronfman Award for Masters of the Crafts. In 2013, Ngan received the British Columbia Creative Achievement Award of Distinction. Ngan’s work has been exhibited worldwide and is included in numerous permanent collections, including the Helen and Morris Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver, and the Gardiner Museum, Toronto. Wayne Ngan is one of Canada’s greatest artists. He is a national treasure.