In this conversation, Ella Porter discusses her practice in the context of New Members of the Craft Potters Association at Contemporary Ceramics. She reflects on her working methods, sources of inspiration, and the ideas that underpin her work. The exhibition runs from the 2nd – 25th April 2026.
The Exhibition
Contemporary Ceramics: How has your work grown for this exhibition?
Ella Porter: For the members show I chose to put works together that were made with similar finishes and colours to give variations on a theme and a shared visual language. The large work ‘rust + earth’ explores ideas behind labour and repetitive processes, the intricate details of the beaded impressions in its surface fade in some areas showing this sense of wear over time. Areas of the work are unglazed showing a more spontaneous action of the simple pour of glaze running over it, leaving revealed areas of iron in the details of the beads more visible.
The smaller works combine multiple components and a sort of archival display, with found fragments housed inside a series of porcelain boxes perched upon small plinth forms.
The Unconscious Surface
Contemporary Ceramics: You describe a process of visually scanning a work to read the unconscious impressions the clay has gathered, before then making conscious interventions in response. That feels like a very particular kind of listening. How do you cultivate that attentiveness, and how do you distinguish between a mark that deserves to stay and one that needs to be erased?
Ella Porter: I guess I’d say I have to be in a calm headspace for this type of engagement with the work; my actions are both spontaneous and perhaps in the same interaction careful and precise.
I am always looking for a balance in the work, it’s really about following a gut feeling and knowing when to pause in the making process. Some works are produced very quickly and others hang around and go through several processes and firings before they are complete. In terms of responding to marks upon the surface I think this also relates back to having a background in painting, for me it was always tough starting with a blank white canvas and so I now think of my practice as almost a collaboration with my material and clay lends itself so well to this.
Painting, Printmaking and Clay
Contemporary Ceramics: Your practice moves fluidly between ceramics and print, and your background spans painting, printmaking and ceramics. How do these material languages speak to one another in your work, and has working with clay fundamentally changed the way you think about the flat surface of print, or vice versa?
Ella Porter: For me the boundaries of 2 dimensional language and 3 dimensional language often become blurred through this way of thinking. I now look at prints or printing plates (often copper sheet) as objects in their own right, which are as valid as the print itself.
Likewise, the ceramic surface of my beaded impression works, now reveal themselves as an opportunity to go back to working like a printmaker, inking up the surface with an oxide or slip and then wiping back as a printmaker would a printing plate. This idea of layering and erasing at different stages of making are very much linked to intaglio plate preparation.
Temporality and Trace
Contemporary Ceramics: You reference temporality, trace and place as central ideas in your practice, alongside historic ceramic artefacts and social theory. Could you talk about what draws you to objects and surfaces that carry the evidence of time, and how does your awareness of ceramic history shape the marks you choose to make or preserve in your own work?
Ella Porter: My interest in historic ceramic artefacts really is based in a sense of connection to people behind the objects.
I look at a wide range of artefacts but for these works there are definitely influences of Mesopotamia and ancient bead weaving processes found worldwide. I often explore processes behind the making of ancient artefacts in an experimental way and I guess some of these find their way into my own process and techniques, however it isn’t always conscious.
Clay and ceramic objects act as a time capsule of touch and this fascinates me. The direct translation of our actions upon it are given back to us through the its surface, it can accurately preserve physical impressions of pretty much anything and this tells us so much about the motivations of the people and individuals that make with clay both past and present.
The Moment of Conclusion
Contemporary Ceramics: You describe sensing the end of a work when you reach “a place of wanting to hold onto what is left” – as though something pre-existing is revealing itself through the process. That is a remarkable way to describe completion. How did you come to trust that feeling, and can you recall a particular work where that moment of revelation took you somewhere unexpected?
Ella Porter: Some works achieve this better than others… and to be honest it is not always the goal with every work.
I guess this goes back to ideas around being a collaborator with the material. I try to be considered in my approach to each work, finding surface treatments, details and proportions which complement one another and sometimes the vision I start with has to shift to fit the work as it evolves.
There is an emphasis on intricate, labour intensive and often slow process in my work; the time taken to produce the beaded impressions of the surfaces I create are in a way a reaction and rejection of the fast paced way we in contemporary society experience visually through screens.
