Ant first encountered pottery in primary school. His teacher, Mr Wright introduced him to clay and planted the beginnings of a lifelong passion. He started out as a science teacher but gave up teaching in his late twenties after years of evening classes and moved to Lincolnshire to set up his own pottery workshop.
Ant has been making pots for over 50 years, the first 25 spent producing terracotta garden pots and then, side by side with his wife Di making maiolica ware. Together in late 2019, they decided on a fundamental shift away from wheel thrown, functional domestic orientated ware. In the early months of 2020, just before lockdown, they began their quest to produce large hand-coiled vessels, decorated with black geometric designs and without the use of glaze.
Influences and techniques come from many sources but most significantly from the Pueblo Potters of New Mexico, USA; and in the UK, from the work of Gabriele Koch and Magdalene Odundo. These makers are responsible for pots of outstanding merit and craftsmanship and have established a level of excellence that Ant and Di aspire to achieve.
Ant & Di Edmonds’ present work has been developed over the past six years. All the pots are coiled by Ant and subsequently pinched, scraped and beaten into shape. The decoration is applied by hand – a full time occupation for Di – between coiling sessions for Ant. The monochromatic designs and abstract patterns are drawn and adapted from many sources including Pueblo Pottery of New Mexico. USA and 1960s Op Art. Each of this couples’ magnificent vessels are dazzling accomplishments embodying the culmination of skill, passion and time.
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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