Designer / Makers Market @ Spitalfields this Saturday

Come see me and Alice Walton at Spitalfields Market on Saturday 21st April

Upcoming work at Secret Garden Party

I have been invited to create an installation for this year's Secret Garden Party Festival.

Inspired by my previous Eppaulettes for Army Pets project, and fitting this years theme 'Standing on Ceremony' my installation will celebrate the curious tradition of animal military mascots.

The installation will take the form of 5 commemorative ceramic plates, hung amongst trees in the forest. Each plate will commemorate a real animal army mascot.

An interactive element is added by oversized military badges describing bizarre but true facts about the animals. For example: William Winsor, the goat, ‘receives a ration of 2 cigarettes a day’ while Sir Nils Olav, a penguin ‘was knighted in 2005’. These badges can awarded to the military mascots by participants who can hang them under the commemorative plate of the animal which they think that fact applies to

Here is a sneak preview:

Clay Intervention in Camden Art Centre's Garden

This weekend I ran a family workshop at Camden Art Centre.


With the help of many small pairs of hands we created clay plants to take over imagined urban spaces... using plaster moulds to make leaves, extruders for grass and sieves to grow moss! I was happy to see others as excited by these processes as me.


http://www.camdenartscentre.org/home/

Insufficient Data: a ceramic map

The work I completed in Denmark lifts and borrows from the accepted visual language of maps; using this I created a dialogue that explores my insufficient sense of direction.


I am fascinated by how maps offer a visualisation of space, they show us the connections and distances between places and this formed the basis of my research during the residency.


This work uses clay to appliqué my interpretation of the new place of Skælskør and Denmark with  collected maps and other people’s observation of that same place to create a collage of expectation, reality, imagination and perception.


What I thought Denmark would be like (mountainous) was very different to what its is actually like (very flat and spacious) and this became an important part of the work I created.

The culmination of our residency was the Guldagergaard Project Network III Group Exhibition at the Apple  House Gallery. 


The exhibition will travel to Grimmerhus International Ceramic Museum from 16th April - 20th August 2012.


http://www.grimmerhus.dk/

The culmination of our residency was the Guldagergaard Project Network III Group Exhibition at the Apple  House Gallery. 


The exhibition will travel to Grimmerhus International Ceramic Museum from 16th April - 20th August 2012


http://www.grimmerhus.dk/

Back of my head makes a guest apperance: Guldagergaard Newsletter

Just before the end of Project Network (the residency programme I was taking part in) the quarterly Guldagergaard Ceramic Research Centre newsletter was published, featuring an article on the Network and a picture of me working away. 

Guldagergaard Danish Ceramics Residency

Two weeks ago I returned from the small harbor town of Skælskør in Denmark after completing a six week residency at the International Ceramic Research Centre; Guldagergaard.


I had an amazing time  creating new work, meeting international ceramic artists and exploring both the local countryside and sights of Copenhagen.


I created a new body of work inspired by maps. I worked with very different clays; experimenting with low-fire coloured earthenware clays including a local brick clay in both red and yellow, terracotta and a black clay. I shared new processes and ideas with the other 8 ceramicists sharing the studio.


Here are some highlights of my time there:

The 2D Table... an important place set up in the library for me and fellow networker Elodie Alexandre http://elolala.wordpress.com/

 Here our ideas took shape in paper, collage and drawings before being developed into clay in the studio.

Each night two of us would cook for everyone... a shopping trip for 16 people.

The demo plate of traditional Danish Smørrebrød, introduced to us by Helene a Danish Ceramicist on the networkhttp://www.helenesoesschjoedts.dk/?page_id=110

The beautiful view of the fjord in Skælskør on an extended bike ride to the post office

A new process I explored; backpainting coloured slip onto a plaster bat before rolling in clay, sometimes the bits left over are as beautiful as the result

Build your own Lego man in the Lego shop in Copenhagen, the possibilities are endless.

Sailor trousers, Check. Scuber diving helmet, Check. Banana, Check.

The view of the farm house we stayed in, through the sculpture park where it was located.

Working through ideas with drawings, maquets and unfired pieces

Working away in my (unusually clean) studio space

Posed Pondering over one of my collaged maps

The ice has melted, only 2 weeks ago this was complelety frozen (see earlier blog posts for evidence!)

The huge bridge at Korsor linking the Danish Islands Zealand and Funen, we were given a tour by Helene's inlaws after being invited over for lunch and taken to a flee market

A natural wonder... this strange ice forms were re-imagined as a mountain in my finished pieces

Tiny mountain tests

An array of test tile islands

The vast expanse of fields that formed a lasting impression of Denmark in my mind and featured in my completed ceramic map