Carolyn is a renowned ceramic artist, author and educator, recognized for her unique use of colour and surface. Her works are an energetic transformation of flat surface into physical entities – emotion occupying a space, not just a ‘feeling or memory’. Her inspiration is internal, a conscious analytical series of responses to an ever-expanding matrix of understanding.
With a 40 year career in pottery and work held in collections across the world from the Museum of Modern Ceramic Art in Japan to the Varazdim Museum in Croatia, Carolyn is a prominent UK maker.
Born in Singapore and now living and working on the South coast of England, Carolyn derives the inspiration behind her hand crafted vessels from colours themselves. Citing the world around her alongside the work of artists who use colour as their form of expression, such as Rothko and Giotto, the striking, abstract, decoration of her pieces breathes life into any room.
This newest body of work offers up a bright and instinctive collection of works which are the direct response to a three month residency in France. They denote a new terrain and a time of joyous expression of colour and emotion through paint and brush, now extended into ceramic forms.
Exhibition pieces will be viewable online from Thursday 14th September
Jenny Southam hand builds figurative sculptures in terracotta clay. She delights in exploring colourful gestural mark-making over their surfaces. This painterly decoration aims to echo the emotional resonance of each piece.
“When I enter the studio I am searching for that serene state of absolute absorption that making and drawing can gift us, which we all wish will, in some manner, enrich our audience.” – Jenny Southam
In a career spanning nearly 50 years, ceramicist, Sophie MacCarthy has developed a unique and distinctive personal style. Through her subtle and bold use of coloured slips, painterly brushwork, stencils and wax-resist, she evokes the colours, forms and movements of the passing seasons. Often focusing on the ground, she finds beauty in the accidental compositions created by wind-blown leaves, stalks and detritus sometimes gathered around a storm drain or scattered over concrete and tarmac, juxtaposing the vibrant colours of the natural world with the gritty textures of the urban environment.
‘She has a poetic insight into the natural world’ David Whiting
Throughout his long career Peter has always sought pathways to the development of new ideas. Often this is a slow process, but sometimes a particular event speeds things along.
Partaking of two residencies in China recently, where Peter worked in porcelain at high temperatures, led him to develop a new body of work, made alongside his existing practice to which Peter is still deeply committed.
This new exhibition represents the outcome of Peter’s working practice.
'This exhibition explores objects that express a quiet equilibrium: fragile, shifting forms that exist in a state of delicate imbalance. Their stillness is easily disturbed, as if the act of holding too tightly might cause something essential to disappear. The works reflect an interest in forms that resist perfection, remaining slightly unresolved, unsettled, and quietly alive.' Akiko Hirai