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.