Aaron Angell

Proposal

Using mainly local materials, I will be building a small riverside studio and anagama kiln at Edenbridge, Kent. This will allow me to explore the effects of ash deposits and the effects of Iga and Shigaraki-type pottery on my work. I hope that this will transform my work into the realms of more naturalistic surface effects made possible by long wood firings.

The main body of work will consist of a radical extension of my ‘Caterpillar engine’ series of works, which takes the form of a large tableaux of thrown and assembled parts, and which reference engine blocks, medieval architecture, the conglomerate nature of landscape and its synthesis into the clays which I use as my primary material.

Follow Aaron’s progress via Instagram: @aaron.angell & @troy.town

Artist Biography

Aaron Angell works primarily with ceramic material and reverse-painted glass. His work is concerned with non-canonical or ‘folk’ histories, marginal forms of image making, and the intersection of poetic thought and sculpture. This is characterised by “…an interest in the lives of extramural artisans in relation to transcultural ideas of visual irony, intention, and accident….[the] strange phenomenological history of decorative artifacts as it corresponds to labour-intensive artistic processes”.

Through his ‘radical and psychedelic’ London ceramic studio, Troy Town Art Pottery, he has sought to encourage new ways of thinking about the culturally nuanced history of ceramics by focusing on the material as a vehicle for sculpture. Through his teaching, and the hosting of free artist residencies at Troy Town, Angell has been deeply influential on a number of other artists working with ceramics today.

Angell’s work is represented in the Tate, Arts Council, and V&A collections. Significant solo exhibitions have been shown at Studio Voltaire, London (2015), Kunsteverein Freiburg (2018) and Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (2017). His work was featured in the British Art Show 8, and has been featured in numerous institutional group exhibitions.

Steven Claydon

Proposal

My work focuses on the migration and transformation of ideas and objects. The unprecedented cross-fertilisation and hybrid aesthetic forged by Leach and Hamada is as relevant today as it was in 1920. The ground-breaking work started at the Leach Pottery became a template for cross-cultural collaboration in many fields and inspired a sense of universal commonality as a retort to the faceless nature of the global economics and national isolationism.

In my work I try to maintain these ideals and explore the way objects can encompass the ancient and modern global exchange of ideas, technologies and identities. The subtle interplay between the cultural, utilitarian and material nature of ‘things’ is particularly and profoundly expressed in the poetry of ceramic objects.

The piece I would like to develop will reflect on the cultural exchange between East Asia and the British Isles. I would like to produce a sculpture based on the traditional architectural shoji sliding screen, constructing ceramic panels housed in a structure built with alternative materials. This structure will subtly reflect Leach’s fireplace tiles and the Kanjiro Kawai kiln walls. Through this work I hope I can make a fitting contribution to the Leach/Hamada legacy.

Artist Biography

Steven Claydon’s work explores the cultural histories and narratives acquired by objects and artworks over time, which is often at dramatic odds with their ‘original’ values or functions. Encompassing sculpture, painting, video and performance, his multidisciplinary practice is concerned with the disjunction between the essential materiality of objects and their ascribed meanings or connotations. By introducing new references, juxtapositions, and ideas to objects or environments heavy with their own architectural and cultural histories, Claydon’s works function beyond their immediate aestheticism to interrogate notions of belonging and of displacement, and of temporality and permanence.

Steven Claydon (b. 1969) lives and works in London. He studied at Chelsea School of Art & Design and Central Saint Martins, London. He has exhibited internationally, with major exhibitions including The Outside In, MERL Museum of English Rural Life, Reading (2018); The Archipelago of Contented Peoples: Endurance Groups, The Common Guild, Glasgow (2017); The Gilded Bough, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2016); Analogues, Methods, Monsters, Machines, CAC Genève, Geneva (2015); The Fictional Pixel and The Ancient Set, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen (2015); Culpable Earth, Firstsite, Colchester (2012); Mon Plaisir...Votre Travail..,.La Salle de Bains, Lyon (2011); Golden Times, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2010); and The Ancient Set and The Fictional Pixel, Serpentine Pavilion, London (2008). In 2015 he curated (with Martin Clark) The Noing Uv It, at Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen; and Strange Events Permit Themselves The Luxury of Occurring at Camden Arts Centre in 2007. His films Grid & Spike and Mimicry Systems were broadcast as part of ICA’s Channel 4 Random Acts in 2013. Claydon has also been involved in experimental electronic music for over 20 years, most notably as part of the bands Add N to X, Jack too Jack, and Long Meg.

Amy Hughes

Proposal

The Leach Pottery is an institution: it is a huge honour to be working with them on the Leach 100. I am really looking forward to visiting and exploring the Pottery, its collections and the St Ives area. 

I am excited to create a collection of large hand built ceramic vessels exploring the Leach aesthetic of ‘brushwork'.  The work aims to form a true connection to the region, working with handcrafted brushes made from locally foraged materials and assembled in my London studio, I shall explore the application of wax resist to create relief across the surfaces of the pots.

I hope to help reinforce the Leach legacy whilst extending it into the future, celebrating ceramics and demonstrating its continued relevance in both culture and contemporary society today.

Follow Amy’s progress via Instagram: @amyjaynehughes

Artist Biography

Amy Hughes is a ceramic artist living and working in London, a graduate of the School of Material, RCA 2010 and founding member of East London multi-disciplinary art and design studio, Manifold.

Primarily a hand builder, Amy explores form and decoration, establishing dialogues between the two. Amy’s work draws upon a fascination with vases, largely from the 18th century, resulting in collections which aim to bridge the gap between past and present, finding a new home in contemporary culture for such objects creating a ‘modern decadence’, whilst paying homage to the originals. Learning from the past; skills used and traditions taught, is fundamental to her current practice, where she strives to develop as a maker whilst always working with an awareness of the heritage of her craft.

Amy has worked and exhibited internationally, most recently at ‘Collect’ with Vessel Gallery and the Crafts Council, at the V&A as part of London Design Festival, and presented her first solo show at the National Trust’s Croome Court, funded by Arts Council England. She has held residencies at Konstfack School, Stockholm and was the successful applicant for the first ‘Ceramics & Industry’ residency at the V&A working in collaboration with 1882Ltd.

Rosanna Martin & David A. Paton

Joint Proposal: Mythical Taxonomies - A Cornish Recombinant Geology

Our collaborative proposal is an experimentally dynamic enquiry that aims, through making, to unlock the mineral energy embedded in materials, and to explore how this force relates to specific places, people and landscapes of Cornwall. Held between the innate laboured knowledge grown in the body over time, and the everyday material processes of industrial craft, it is also an energy of transformation that occurs from looking at something afresh, with wonder, as artists.

Though derived from the same geological source, the materials we each work with are opposing by nature. Rosanna’s focus is on kaolinised clay and other geological matter, while David attends to quarried granites in their more solid and seemingly stable form. We will visit a number of sites across Cornwall chosen for their specific geology, history and material presence; collecting imprints, images, stories and material samples. These visits will serve as a lens into the practices of landscape past and present, and as a catalyst for dialogue across a range of artworks. We will produce a range of kiln fired sculptures, drawings, film, photographs, and text, that will widely explore how humans connect and interact with the landscapes they inhabit. The resulting collection of artefacts will form a unique taxonomical system that playfully attends to the distinct topographical and industrial chronology of Cornwall.

Follow Rosanna’s & David’s progress via Instagram: @rosanna_martin_ & @dr_david_a_paton

Artist Biographies

Rosanna Martin

Rosanna is a socially engaged ceramic artist working in Cornwall. Her practice explores the relationship between landscape, people and materiality through sculpture, participatory projects and events. Materials, marks and topographies left on the land by human activity evoke intrigue and act as starting points for artworks.

Born and raised in Cornwall, Rosanna spent her childhood exploring the banks of the River Fal, where waste china clay from the western pits in St Austell’s clay country had silted up the creek. Time spent exploring this silt; a mud which was bright white and sparkled with flecks of mica, built an early connection with clay. In recent years Rosanna has been researching and making work in response to this china clay deposit, and the entwined histories, brick-making, processes, memories, and people it connects.

Rosanna established Brickworks in 2017, a centre for education and creativity in clay, in Penryn, Cornwall. She is also currently lead artist on Brickfield, an experimental brickworks based in a disused china clay pit near St. Austell, that teaches people how to hand-make bricks by traditional methods using waste materials from the china clay extraction process, supported by Whitegold. Brickfield empowers individuals and communities to connect to their industrial heritage, geology and local landscape through shared labour.

David A. Paton

David is a lecturer in fine art, an artist-researcher and a craftsperson with a specialism in Cornish granite. He was brought up on the east and west coasts of Africa where his father worked in remote limestone and granite quarries. This early experience profoundly influenced the trajectory of his life and work, and bound him to a life-long exploration of the geologic.

He has been a practicing artist and stone sculptor since 1993, and for many years worked extensively in the public sphere, initiating a number of artist-led and socially engaged projects across the UK.

In 2005 David moved to Cornwall and began working with Trenoweth Granite Quarry, leading him to start a PhD in Cultural Geography titled ‘The Quarry as Sculpture: The Place of Making’ (2015). David’s research attended to the deep relations that grow over time between place, making, people and material. As part of his research, he developed innovative experiments with firing large granite blocks in electric and reduction kilns. His PHD research has led to numerous other explorations of granite such as post-doctoral work with the National Trust,  the ‘Tracing Granite’ Groundwork commission (2017) and South West Creative Technology Network Fellowship (2018/19). David has published widely on place, materiality and craft, and has recently initiated a ‘Crafted Pedagogies’ project, exploring alternative educational platforms and mentoring, currently supported by Cultivator.