Clay in Conversation 10: Circles is the tenth in a series of curated conversations, presenting artists working with clay and ceramics.

This tenth episode invites artists Sarah Howard @sara__howard and Rosanna Martin @rosanna_martin_ and chaired by Georgia Haseldine (Senior Curator, V&A East) @thelondonbrick

This episode coincides with the exhibition The Whole World In Our Hands being held at The Stephen Lawrence Gallery, opening 12 April – 17 May. 

The Clay in Conversation series is curated by artist @juliaellenlancaster_ceramics

The series provides a platform for presentation, dialogue and discovery, bringing together a diverse range of artists with a practice using clay and ceramics. 

Each conversation centres on a different theme - acting as a lens through which the artists present their projects. The conversations offer the opportunity to dig deeper into the work, exploring it formally, materially and conceptually, from the perspective of the artists themselves.

The presentations are followed by a conversation chaired by Georgia Haseldine and a Q&A with the audience.

Clay in Conversation 8: Conflict

Clay in Conversation runs in partnership with the Ceramics Research Centre-UK (CREAM), University of Westminster and is held at: 

Portland Hall, Basement, 4 - 12 Little Titchfield Street, London W1W 7BY.

The curated conversations provide a platform for presentation, dialogue and discovery, bringing together a diverse range of artists with a practice using clay and ceramics. 

Each conversation centres on a specific theme - acting as a lens through which the artists will present a piece of work or project. The conversations offer the opportunity to dig deeper into the work, exploring it formally, materially and conceptually, from the perspective of the artists themselves. 

The presentations are followed by a Q&A session with the audience. 

Clay in Conversation is curated by artist Julia Ellen Lancaster @juliaellenlancaster_ceramics in partnership with the Ceramics Research Centre-UK (CREAM), University of Westminster https://cream.ac.uk/

For this eighth episode in 2024 we are pleased to present artists Barbara Beyer and Tessa Eastman.

Barbara Beyer is drawn to minimal and archaic forms, natural and manmade and the evoking sensation of the sculptural object. Her work addresses and celebrates but also questions the consequences of our fundamental ability to shape, change and make.  Traces of process remain, and material qualities and potential become visible and form an essential part of her work.

Beyer lives and works in London, is member of the Royal Society of Sculptors, The London Group and Studio Member at Rochester Square Ceramics in Camden.

Beyer has shown nationally and internationally including:  2023 London Group Open, Copeland Gallery; Wells Art Contemporary 2023, site-specific installation Wells Cathedral,  Royal Society of Sculptors Summer Show, Dora House ;  Wander_land at Tremenheere Sculpture Garden;  Warped Domesticities Stash Gallery; Congregation, Rebecca Newnham Studio, Tisbury;  On the Edge, Espacio Gallery, 2022 Wells Art Contemporary 22, gallery and site-specific installation Wells Cathedral; Catch your Breath, Waterloo Park; Together We Rise, Chichester Cathedral; unterwegs solo exhibition Northouse Gallery Manningtree

@beyer.ba.   www.barbarabeyer.uk

Tessa Eastman hand-builds her pieces drawing inspiration from form seen through a microscope, in the sea or the sky. She explores strangeness of growth, where systems flow and digress. Eastman’s playful aesthetic lends itself to the abstract cloud-like formations and curiously ambiguous sea-like creatures that appear to inhabit her work. Creating uncanny pieces where idiosyncratic shape, the combination of solid and open forms, bulbous and interlaced, accretive and geometric, weighs with the attention she gives to surface; coarse and smooth, matt and glossy, pristine and weathered, influenced by her research into glaze science

Eastman lives and works in London with a studio at Cockpit centre for excellence in Craft. She has worked with clay since a young age, gaining an MA Ceramics at The Royal College of Art in 2015. Eastman was selected for the British Ceramics Biennial in 2015 and has consistently exhibited nationally and internationally including Crafting Circularity, The Art Workers Guild, 2023; The Orchard Collection of ceramics and glass, Christie’s, 2023; Cloudspotting, Jason Jaques Gallery, New York, 2019; Strangeness in Nature, Clifford Chance Gallery, London, 2018-19; Puls Contemporary Ceramics, Brussels, 2018.

@tessa_eastman.   www.tessaeastman.com

Tessa Peters is Senior Lecturer in the History and Theory of Art at University of Westminster, an Associate Lecturer at CSM, a researcher, writer and independent curator. Her curatorial projects include Cultural Icons for the British Ceramics Biennial at the Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent, and Hove Museum & Art Gallery in 2019-2020. Since 2020 she has facilitated a series of inclusive cross-cultural dialogues, assisting an understanding of issues faced by ceramics practices in different global regions.

@UoW_CREAM                                                                                                                             Ceramics Research Centre - UK

Julia Ellen Lancaster is an artist working out of London and Kent, UK. Graduating from the Royal College of Art she spent time spent in Tokyo, exhibiting at Youkobo Arts Centre, Tokyo. Lancaster was subsequently selected for the Leach 100 Residency, St Ives, UK in 2020 as part of the Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada pottery centenary celebrations. In 2021 she was awarded a further residency with Leach Pottery, being one of the first artists to take up a residency at the historically significant Anchor studio, the original home of the Newlyn Art School. Exhibiting across the UK, Japan and Australia, Julia also teaches ceramics and sculpture in a professional capacity. She is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors and the Craft Potters Association. 

@juliaellenlancaster_ceramics.   www.juliaellenlancaster.com

This is an ‘in person’ event. Please not the new venue:

Portland Hall, Basement, 4 - 12 Little Titchfield Street, London W1W 7BY.

Clay in Conversation 7: Connection

Clay in Conversation runs in partnership with the Ceramics Research Centre-UK (CREAM), University of Westminster and is held at:

University of Westminster, Regent Street, London, W1B 2HW

The curated conversations provide a platform for presentation, dialogue and discovery, bringing together a diverse range of artists with a practice using clay and ceramics.

Each conversation centres on a specific theme - acting as a lens through which the artists will present a piece of work or project. The conversations offer the opportunity to dig deeper into the work, exploring it formally, materially and conceptually, from the perspective of the artists themselves.

The presentations are followed by a Q&A session with the audience.

Clay in Conversation is curated by artist Julia Ellen Lancaster @juliaellenlancaster_ceramics in partnership with the Ceramics Research Centre-UK (CREAM), University of Westminster https://cream.ac.uk/

For this seventh conversation and kicking off 2024 we are pleased to present artists Harriet Hellman and Jess Skelton

Harriet Hellman is primarily a process-led ceramic artist working in response to the environment and landscape. Having completed an MA in Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art in 2020, she has gone on to exhibit her work internationally and has been awarded ceramic residencies in Denmark, UK, Ireland and Japan. She was also shortlisted for the Sustainability First Art Prize 2021.

The process of wood firing using Anagama and soda kilns while on a residency in Denmark has taken Harriet on a new journey, allowing her to embrace the alchemy of the kiln and develop her practice both in the UK and abroad.

Harriet continues to explore ‘human’ time versus ‘deep’ time in nature, through embodied and performative making practices in ceramics, drawing, photography and film. 

@harriet_ceramics

www.harriethellman.co.uk

Jess Skelton makes abstract sculptural work, sourced in the idea and form of the vessel. Final pieces ‘emerge’ rather than being planned, through a process of disruption and risk taking. Skelton is beguiled by what lies beneath the shiny veneers society often presents us with, preferring the honesty of the shadow places and derelict spaces. She is particularly drawn to old boatyards, where she finds a kind of beauty, witnessing both the precarious existence and innovative natures, of those who live beyond the bounds of convention.

She considers herself to be consciously ‘winging it’ in the sense that her work survives being pushed to its’ limits in the making processes, then melting, collapsing and fusing in the kiln to form a final identity, which although is of her making, is ultimately beyond her control.

@jess.skelton.ceramics

www.theclayfield.org

Tessa Peters is Senior Lecturer in the History and Theory of Art at University of Westminster, an Associate Lecturer at CSM, a researcher, writer and independent curator. Her curatorial projects include Cultural Icons for the British Ceramics Biennial at the Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent, and Hove Museum & Art Gallery in 2019-2020. Since 2020 she has facilitated a series of inclusive cross-cultural dialogues, assisting an understanding of issues faced by ceramics practices in different global regions.

@UoW_CREAM            

Ceramics Research Centre-UK

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Clay in Conversation 6: Time is the sixth in a series of curated conversations, presenting artists working with clay and ceramics.

We are so excited to welcome and present artists Aneta Regal @anetaregal and Rebecca Appleby @rebeccaappleby7 with Tessa Peters @tessapeters2 as chair.

Booking via Eventbrite here

The curated conversations provide a platform for presentation, dialogue and discovery, bringing together a diverse range of artists with a practice using clay and ceramics. 

Each conversation centres on a specific theme - acting as a lens through which the artists will present a piece of work or project. The conversations offer the opportunity to dig deeper into the work, exploring it formally, materially and conceptually, from the perspective of the artists themselves. 

The presentations are followed by a Q&A session with the audience. 

Clay in Conversation is curated by artist Julia Ellen Lancaster in partnership with the Ceramics Research Centre-UK (CREAM), University of Westminster https://cream.ac.uk/

For this sixth conversation we are honoured to welcome and present artists Rebecca Appleby and Aneta Regal. 

Working with clay, Rebecca Appleby explores fundamental structure in architecture, nature and anatomy in her work, investigating industrial & architectural fragments metamorphosed by the ravages of time. 

Her recent work presents an organic, architectural & personal response to the overwhelming impact of trauma, disaster and redevelopment, exploring new process' and techniques to represent both pathos and moments of joy. 

Appleby also references the term stele or stela in her recent work; a stone or wooden slab, generally taller than it is wide, erected in the ancient world as a monument The surface of the stele often has text, ornamentation, or both. These may be inscribed, carved or painted. Stelae were created for many reasons; for funerary or commemorative purposes, Ancient Greek and Roman government notices or as boundary markers to mark borders or property lines. Stelae were occasionally erected as memorials to people or events. Appleby’s sculptures represent an autobiographical series of stela that commemorate and mark important personal stories, events and experiences. Appleby brings a painterly and sculptural eye to her work, which goes beyond the boundaries of her traditional background in ceramics. 

Having graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2001, Appleby worked as a teacher until 2015 when she dedicated herself fully to her artistic practice. Earlier this year, Appleby was selected as one of the ten artists to take part in the British Ceramics Biennial Award 2023 held in Stoke on Trent. 

www.rebeccaappleby.com

Aneta Regal considers herself to be part of the last generation who can vividly remember the post-communist era in Poland and its dramatic end; those times of great transition and contrast have had a great influence on her life and work since. 

Her will to expand and push beyond boundaries with a slightly rebellious attitude perhaps comes from those experiences, as well as an insatiable curiosity and aim to explore her own and her material’s limits, especially when working with clay. 

Multiple layers of the same elements in different states are repeatedly dried and re-fired, telling a story of constant metamorphosis, of conflict and change, emphasising the materials’ capacity to be modified and which perhaps equates to not only our own ontology but also on the way we interact with objects and one another. 

Working and living in London for 17 years, exploring its vibrant multicultural energy, has greatly influenced Regal, whereby her work has gradually become an eclectic mixture of elements, the result of a meeting of the past with present reality; of Western and Eastern culture. 

Themes of memory and passage of time, displacement, nostalgia for family home, childhood and the surrounding landscape and local legends are at the core of her practice. Earlier this year Regal held a much revered solo show, ‘Memory Landscape’ at Sarah Myerscough Gallery, London. 

www.anetaregal.com

Tessa Peters is Senior Lecturer in the History and Theory of Art at University of Westminster, an Associate Lecturer at CSM, a researcher, writer and independent curator. Her curatorial projects include Cultural Icons for the British Ceramics Biennial at the Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent, and Hove Museum & Art Gallery in 2019-2020. Since 2020 she has facilitated a series of inclusive cross-cultural dialogues, assisting an understanding of issues faced by ceramics practices in different global regions.

Making East London Porcelain is part of a collaborative science-led heritage project between the V&A Museum and Newham Borough of London, which has been made possible by the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) Capability for Collections Fund. Focusing on the celebrated Bow Porcelain Factory, this project brings communities together to explore Newham Borough as a place of creativity, experimentation and entrepreneurship in the mid-eighteenth century. Co-curated with sixth-form students from Chobham Academy (Newham) and Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School (Chelsea), the exhibition explores how heritage science and re-making practices can help us better understand the places we live today and inspire us to innovate and experiment tomorrow.

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