Gavin Houghton
Exhibitions
Biography
Gavin Houghton has turned his practical, playful eye to everything from art direction and painting to ceramics. Surface design has always intrigued him, from when he was a young boy cutting out the little men on the Hamleys bags to stick them all over his bedroom ceiling, to his time working at World of Interiors and Vogue Magazine and then throughout his work as an interior designer.
Gavin enrolled on an evening course in Lewisham shortly before lockdown and learned the art of slab building. 'I wanted to make a set of decorative plates and this seemed like a good way to go about it,' he recalls. Then lockdown put a stop to the classes. But, with a stroke of luck, Gavin ended up inheriting a kiln from a friend and carved out space in his studio - a red shed at the back of his London garden - to make ceramics.
'I spent the summer of 2020 on a mad rampage making plates,' he says. His charming - often cheekily decorated - plates and vases have attracted commissions from the likes of Charleston. He created a collection of plates to complement the exhibition Very Private?, which opened at the East Sussex house that was once home to the Bloomsbury group in September 2022.
Gavin is influenced by the Bloomsbury group, Picasso, Jean Cocteau and South African artist Hylton Nel but he sources inspiration from anywhere and everywhere. When images resonate with him they may well end up on one of his pieces: a Jack Russell gazing expectantly from the centre of a serving platter, a figure with a knowing grin on the bottom of a teacup, or perhaps something more risqué, like two male lovers caught in the act adorning a decorative plate.
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