Our Ceramics selection for CAA at Collect 2024 represent a diverse range of mesmerising techniques and glorious artistry. Featuring makers Rosa Wiland Holmes, Lise Herud Braten, Laura Plant, Tanya Gomez, Ashley Howard and Zoë Hillyard.
Growing up on the beautiful island of Bornholm in Denmark, Rosa was always inspired by the beauty of nature on the island. The inspiration for her work comes from the beautiful female shape and curves as well as the nature around us.
The inspiration for her work comes from the beautiful female shape and curves as well as the nature around us. Rosa plays with the contrast in dark and light, smooth and rough like the sweeping waves, rocky cliffs, or the smoothness of a stone on the beach. Layers of colour tones, textures and happy accidents that make each piece unique. The Beauty is in the imperfection. The more you look the more you discover. All of it ignites her imagination. Immediately Rosa begins to think what materials to use and how to treat them to recreate the colours and textures to produce works that are abstract and sculptured in their feel and shape.
Lise Herud Braten’s work is deeply rooted in the landscape she grew up in Norway, and embodies her longing for the environment which, to her, represents wild and dramatic views, a feeling of being a tiny part of the vast landscapes, and at the same time an immense sense of freedom and belonging.
Using a variety of stoneware and porcelain clays, each piece is layered with slips, engobes, oxides, glazes and natural ash, applied in a painterly and abstract way. Often the pieces are fired several times, with new layers added between each firing. The resultant effect of this treatment suffuses the pieces with a sense of history, of time spent exposed and weathered by the natural elements. There is a sense of timelessness and quiet beauty deep within each piece. The shape of the moon-vase had become a canvas for Lise’s explorations of the surfacs that remind her of the craggy rock faces, lichen covered stones, and aged tree-bark she looks to for inspiration. The colour palette is natural, with hints of bright greens and rust as is often in the mountain regions of Buskerud and the coastal areas arund the Oslo fjord. Lise has also translated these techniques onto a two-dimensional ceramic wall panel, framed by a silm stained oak frame.
Laura Plant makes in her hometown of Stoke-on-Trent, she draws from the creative heritage and ambition of the pioneering potters who made the city famous. Her vessels expose the unique qualities of the ceramic surface through exploration of clay bodes, glaze and making techniques. Each clay and process bring a different character to the work, the different surface qualities sitting harmoniously together.
Laura’s work is an exploration of form, taking influence from the ceramic heritage of Stoke-on-Trent. From this she has begun to research Ancient Greek Pottery, which was a key influence for Josiah Wedgwood and his contemporaries. Laura was drawn to the beautiful forms and precision of making which is made more incredible considering the technology of the day. Laura’s work for Collect re-imagines classical forms whilst honouring the craftsmanship of the originals.
The sea and land has always been at the foundation of Tanya Gomez's inspiration and work. Having grown up by the sea and travelled on it for nearly a decade, her work can often imply a sense of movement, the fluidity of water in motion, while also mirroring the depth and mystery of the sea and its intangible horizon. Trained at the renowned Royal College of Art in London, Gomez's explorations in ceramic have primarily focused on porcelain and the dynamic and unique glazing this refined material allows for.
Tanya's most recent work, Portholes, is a new departure, an investigation into layering glazes and multi firings to create a painterly surface that has a sense of depth, an invitation into another world, one that is infinitely intriguing, whether the deep ocean or space. As the title suggests, portholes are a way to see that which often cannot be seen, looking into an expanse, both actual and internal, giving insight into the world beyond our day to day existence. Portholes is a view onto the mesmeric and mysterious, an invitation to look deeply.
Ashley Howard’s work examines the relationship between form, surface and decorative placement. Informed by his interest in spiritual space and locations, the work draws upon fluidity and movement, where the rhythms and qualities of its forming are retained. Decorative elements are inspired by Japanese enamel wares and music. Howard became a member of the International Academy of Ceramics in 2024.
Ashley Howard is inspired by the writings of composer John Cage. Cage held views that he finds impossible to resist and explore. One of these surround his views on objects. Cage suggested that objects were not objects as such, but events.
Zoë Hillyard is a Birmingham based artist who uses the tradition of hand-stitched patchwork as a mending process to revive the fortunes of discarded and broken ceramics. She wraps individual fragments and then reassembles them, solely by stitch. Each piece is unique, with a flawed beauty that celebrates imperfection.
Zoë is exhibiting a series of organic vessels. They represent a departure for her, the result of a desire to make work from materials that support nature’s cycles and rhythms. Zoe collected the eggshells her household produced for over 3 years. They have been cleaned, baked and grounded into a powder to become the dominant ingredient for biomaterial. Homegrown produce provide an organic (and later edible) mould around which to build a biodegradable ceramic substitute.
