CULTURE • CERAMIC ART ANNA LAMBERT; IMAGE COURTESY OF CERAMIC ART LONDON
“The fair pops with colour this spring with blooming polkadot vessels in shades of crimson and cobalt”
CLARE CROUCHMAN; IMAGE COURTESY OF CERAMIC ART LONDON
IN HO SONG; IMAGE COURTESY OF CERAMIC ART LONDON
Ceramic Art London is renowned for traversing the boundary between functionality and fine art as demonstrated by Alison Gautrey’s shell-like tilting bowls, Ashraf Hanna’s undulating modernist lines and Barry Stedman’s colour-splashed wares that bring to mind abstract painting. The fair pops with colour this spring with Grainne Watts’ blooming polkadot vessels in shades of crimson and cobalt and Lara Scobie’s vases vividly detailed in red, orange and yellow. Sophie Cook’s impossibly elegant bottles return in luminous hues of lemon and lime, while Roger Coll’s idiosyncratic, twisting forms are rendered in bold palettes of red, blue and coral. Sculpture abounds too in Martin Pearce’s Henry Moore-esque forms, Angela Verdon’s sensual works of abstraction and Joachim Lambrecht’s darkly enigmatic forms. While In Ho Song’s playful clay characters push at the boundaries of tradition, and Anelise Bredow’s cartoon-like designs bring some alien-inspired humour to the fair. Opening with a keynote speech by Grayson Perry CBE, the always popular
ClayTalks, programmed by the faculty at Central Saint Martins, includes Phoebe Cummings, winner of the Woman’s Hour Craft Prize 2017, Professor Simon Lacey on the history of the Craft Potters Association and artist Keith Harrison, winner of the Jerwood Award for Joyride, to name just a few. Elsewhere, Home from Home celebrates international ceramicists who have made the UK their home, while a number of talks focus on how Stoke-on-Trent is reclaiming its mantle as a global centre for ceramics manufacturing and education. These include lecturer Helen Felcey and Dena Bagi from the British Ceramics Biennial, Lisa Hammond MBE, who recently launched Clay College, and Keith Brymer Jones, who plans to reopen the historic Spode factory. Also this year, and in a first for Ceramic Art London, CSM students will host a ceramic studio where they will make new work in front of a live audience. As well as gaining insight into all stages of the making process, visitors will be offered the opportunity to comment on the direction the work should take as it is being made.
CERAMIC ART LONDON 23-25 March Granary Building, 1 Granary Square, N1C; ceramicartlondon.com A B S O L U T E LY. L O N D O N
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