Frances Elisabeth
Absorbing myself in the intricate details of tree bark, or the strength of a single blade of grass, my hands trace the edges and crevices of the natural world, echoing the ways in which I explore my own body.
Compelled by the erotic and the concept of our innate wildness, my work investigates how we make and sustain connections through pleasure, specifically here ‘forbidden pleasure’ informing and infusing our domestic lives with a sense of integrity towards our whole existence.
Working with porcelain, paper porcelain and terracotta, I explore sensorial engagement with material as a way of evidencing somatic experience, recording gesture and movement to accentuate a sense of dwelling within the making process.
Julie Hutton
An official Feminist since 2020, I employ the ‘Pataphor’ an unusually extended metaphor, where an idea or concept takes on a life of its own.
My work explores the notion of ‘Chopsy’ women, and the use of pataphysics encourages greater exploration, transformation, and alternative possibilities. New narratives have evolved through seeking and examining the opposite, irony, paradox, and contradiction.
Evan Jones
I use my experience as a potter in conjunction with gathered materials to explore the distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘crafted’. By using raw materials gathered during expeditions into the landscape together with refined materials, the way we view ‘natural’ and ‘crafted’ can become more about the ecosystems they interact with and less anthropocentric.
I use slate as it behaves quite unexpectedly in the kiln, expanding and melting, in conjunction with porcelain to give a greater autonomy to the pieces. My work is based in the traditions of pottery but expands and explores in sculptural forms ideas of materiality, the relationship between artificial and natural, and mindfulness.
Sandra Lloyd Lewis
My work has evolved out of a blending of the themes of science fiction, genetic engineering, and the work of Hieronymus Bosch. The marriage of Bosch’s surrealism & genetic engineering, when viewed through the lens of science fiction, gives rise to curious speculative forms, which are neither vessel, nor figurative, but allude to elements of both.
I use slip casting of objects which allows me to splice together pieces into new forms, in a ceramic version of genetic engineering ; the use of slip trailing is used both as decoration but also in a structural way, building up parts of the work piece by piece. This method of constructing the pieces embodies the organic quality of new growth or the slow building of stalagmites.
Val O’Donnell
My ceramic sculptures are inspired by everyday objects that I encounter as a biochemistry researcher interested in understanding the secret life of blood cells. These range from reimagined laboratory vessels to abstract forms informed by the microscopic structures of molecules, cells, or tissues. They are borne through experimentation, from the study of surface and form, and often using repurposed biochemistry laboratory items such as round-bottom flasks as tools with which to press mould.
The tactility of the round pieces, generated by a combination of their round shape and soft burnished sheen, invites us to touch and stroke them, and consider our visceral relationship with our own bodies; how they are formed, develop, grow, flourish, age and decay.
Clare Stephens
I create vessels that relate to and have dialogue with each other, their surroundings and those who interact both visually and by touch. Communication with material, objects and each other occurs by engaging in many ways, physical, spatially, emotionally, and spiritually.
Our presence, ‘being-with’, an intangible essence by which objects (my vessels or pots) interact with us and our world, underpins and runs throughout my making.
I connect with both the materiality of clay, tacit knowledge of generations of potters, subconsciously combining technical and material knowledge, a timeless interaction with all societies and cultures.
