Richmond Art Gallery – Imperfect Offerings: Tea and Tour

On the last day of the Imperfect Offerings exhibition, join the artists and curator over a cup of tea in the Art Gallery, using cups made for this exhibition by Jesse Birch. Learn more about the exhibition with an informal tour and discussion led by Curator Shaun Dacey, and artists Jesse Birch, Naoko Fukumaru, and Glenn Lewis.

Free admission, but registration is required due to limited capacity.  Latecomers may lose their spot.

Current health guidelines will be in place, ensuring a safe environment for all participants. For more information, see our How to Visit page here.

NOTE – Due to the popularity of this event, we have added another seating. Please register for either Seating 1 or 2.

Seating 1: Takes place at 2:00pm for tea service first, followed by a tour.

Seating 2: Takes place at 2:30pm where participants join Seating 1 on the tour, then follow up with tea service.

About the exhibition:

Imperfect Offerings features new commissions and past works by three BC artists with a ceramics practice: Jesse Birch, Naoko Fukumaru, Glenn Lewis. The works presented embody both function and beauty. Selected pieces recall the artists’ hands that made them, foregrounding the tactility of creating, rebuilding, and healing. The exhibition’s core themes resonate with our collective journey through the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting recovery and a careful return to sociality. Several of the pieces are also functional pieces of pottery, meant to be used to serve tea or share food and drink. This exhibition brings together objects that serve as conduits for intimate care and aesthetic play.

Artist Biographies

Naoko Fukumaru is a Kyoto-born, Vancouver-based kintsugi artist. A professional conservator — who previously worked at the Detroit Institute of Arts Museum, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and was involved in major conservation projects such as Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper — Fukumaru has been collaborating with prominent B.C. potters since 2019 to restore, adapt, and reinvent their broken or cracked works. The exhibition presents over 200 works of kintsugi as well as the new commission and installation Slug Pottery Excavation Room, an homage to the legacy of the artists who helped define the pottery scene in B.C. Created with pieces of broken ceramics found at the former site of Mick Henry’s studio, Slug Pottery, the installation gives shape to a unique form of collaboration between artists past and present. Fukumaru’s kintsugi respectfully brings new life and attention to the works of Henry, Lewis, Wayne Ngan, Heinz Laffin, and others.

Glenn Lewis is a renowned artist who apprenticed under Bernard Leach in the UK in the early 1960s. The exhibition features The Poetic Process, an installation of 20 large-scale photographs and five pots originally created while Lewis was in residence at Leach Pottery in St. Ives, England. When the work was shipped to Vancouver, the pottery arrived broken. Rather than discarding the pieces, Lewis decided to repair the pots using kintsugi, a 500-year-old Japanese method of restoring damaged ceramics through golden rejoinery. The work now serves as a reminder of the beauty in imperfections.

Jesse Birch is the curator of Nanaimo Art Gallery, an artist, and writer. His emerging ceramics practice has been influenced by BC potters following the Hamada and Leach tradition, including Lewis. For Imperfect Offerings, Birch presents a new teapot set with cups that he has gifted to Richmond Art Gallery. Once the exhibition closes, the set will join the gallery’s everyday kitchen wares, rather than entering the collection. Birch intends to help facilitate future convivial encounters in the space, while also contributing to the care of those who work so hard making culture happen. The set has also been touched by kintsugi: the teapot lid cracked during the original firing and was repaired by Fukumaru.