Emerging Makers Award
In association with The Archie Bray Foundation, USA & Waikato Society of Potters, New Zealand.
Sponsored by Potclays Ltd, Wales Arts International and the Welsh Assembly Government
Emerging Makers Competition:
The Emerging Makers Competition began in 2011. It is an opportunity for UK potters and artists working with clay, who have graduated from college within the past five years, to present a Powerpoint slideshow about their work at the 2013 International Ceramics Festival.
Six makers will be selected to make presentations at the festival. The content of these presentations will focus on their current work and how this might develop during an international visiting artist scheme.
A visiting artist award will be given to the winners of the New and Emerging Makers Competition as voted for by the festival audience. The Archie Bray Foundation Visiting Artist Award will be awarded to a Welsh based maker. The Waikato Society of Potters Visiting Artist Award will be awarded to a UK based maker.
This Ceramicists selected to give presentations at this years festival are:
TINA NEALS
All things in life are connected and when events trigger change we work with it to see where it takes us. Nothing stays the same everything, everyone, all of life evolves.
The material and processes in this work give form to this activity. Each object reflects significant points within the creative journey.
My work is a reflection of my understanding of the world I live in, and the constant state of motion and evolution we are part of. (Merge/Diverge 2010)
I was interested in how the creative process, new findings and experiences can influence the work and can enhance or even create ideas.
I take this laminating process and fused the new objects with it. The movement and flow in the laminations, folds and curves of the clay I see as a metaphor for a life journey. Each new experience or environment feeding change to this form evolving it and influencing it, the fusion of a new object creating new evolved forms.
FIONA BYRNE-SUTTON
My press moulded vessels, are physical, expressive of geological processes. The vigorous handling of clay is a balance of risk and control. Each vessel is unique, formed with black stoneware and embedded with clays I dig up near the principal rivers of Scotland. Iron oxide is also central to my work as the clays are usually saturated with iron oxide in one of its forms – black, ochre or red. These clays fire orange or deep brown so my work is a tale of orange and black, a colour combination with an ancient ceramic pedigree. I celebrate the Scottish land by exploring each clay’s properties. The bowls’ round circle is an archetypal form; These vessels, with no obvious function, use the vocabulary of domestic ceramic craft – the bowl, the pouring cut in the lip, the rectangular handle incision in the vessel wall, to make statements about form and space. Measuring 55cm across and 19cm high they create an immense space for reflection. I am trying to develop an unsentimental craft that corresponds with the unsettled times we live in.
My parents were keen mountaineers and moved to Switzerland to be in the Alps so I spent a lot of time in the mountains as a child. I believe this early immersion in wilderness, landscape and weather helped form my imaginative and emotional bond with clay I first moved to Scotland from London 1988 where I had studied fine art at Goldsmiths. A brief spell back in London in 1993- 96 excepted, Scotland has been my home ever since. I completed a ceramics degree at Glasgow School of Art in 2008.
Www.Fionabyrnesutton.co.uk
LISA SVENSK
I am inspired by fairy tales, folk stories, and fantasy and such. My mother’s idealisation of Russian decorative art and culture has been influential throughout my life. A few years ago, upon the discovery of my Russian heritage, I grew curious of Russian culture and its fairy tales, particularly an old folk story called Vasilisa the Beautiful. Within this tale I found many interesting characters: the heroine Vasilisa, Baba Yaga, the ‘Boney Legs’ witch, who owns a sentient magical house that escapes from danger on giant chicken legs; plus a number of other fantastic ancillary characters.
I consider myself as an emerging ceramic artist who still develops new forms and decorative folk paintings, inspired by various unique cultures. The statuettes and sculptures created during my master’s degree are perhaps merely the beginnings of my developing signature style. However this body of work is the foundation from which I will extend my exploration of other folk stories from around the world.
BETÜL KATIGÖZ
I am interested in creating handmade objects through which I can communicate my innermost feelings. My pinched pot vessels explore the relationship between fragility and strength, logic and emotion. Touching the clay enables me to convey these feelings through the repetitive actions of developing hollow forms. I use very rough brick clay to create my work which, for me, represents the physical state of the human body. However some of my forms are delicate and petit representing my emotional state.
After graduating in June 2010, I attended the 4th Terra Cotta Symposium in Eskişehir, Turkey as an assistant. There I met the artist Gwen Heeney who specialises in brick sculpture. While working with her group as her assistant and interpreter for over two weeks it confirmed my desire to continue exploring clay and one year later I began my Masters in Ceramics at the University of Wolverhampton UK with Gwen as my tutor.
Through the experience and tactility of working with clay I have developed the belief that clay will enable me to discover myself and my identity more deeply, both physically and metaphorically. It has enabled me to value and become deeply indebted to my own culture and ceramic traditions and bring the handmade into my own work. I have also felt more at ease and creatively inspired designing on the computer as I now use it to support my art practice rather than to start the process as I did as a product designer in Turkey.
ROS PERTONS
A native of the North-East of England, Ros now lives and works in South-West London.
Originally a Fine Art graduate, she became interested in both the long history of ceramics and the making of pottery, during travels abroad. Adult Education ceramics classes formed her introduction to making, and cemented this maturity-onset passion. She gave up work as a freelance conference and event organiser and, since completing her MA in 2009, Ros has set up a workshop and regularly exhibited work in the UK, with pieces being shown in juried or group exhibitions in the USA, China, Korea, and Japan.
At iMAgine – her MA interim show – her work was selected for the MA Stars section of the AXIS atists website.
In 2009, she exhibited at FRESH – the graduate show at the British Ceramics Biennial.
In 2012, a piece of her work was selected for the exhibition for one year as part of the Craftsense Exhibition at Bilston Craft Gallery.
Elizabeth Blande
Elizabeth Blande Studied Contemporary Ceramics at the University of Wales Institute Cardiff.
There, she obtained her degree in 2011; achieving an A* in her dissertation on Monastic Ceramics. At present, she is the Pottery Instructor at ‘Pepenbury’, delivering therapeutic and creative
pottery sessions five days a week to over 70 adults with learning difficulties.
She lives in Kent with her husband.
She combines communal projects with the students and, in addition to that solo exploration.
Currently, working in earthenware, her work is an investigation into patterns and textures,
which have been inspired by the rural patchwork landscape.
At the forefront her vision is to continue to learn, create, teach and share.
