Storyline
Potters from around the world showed off their latest creations at Ceramic Art London, the largest high-end ceramics show in the UK. Returning to the capital for its 21st year, more than 6,000 people were expected to visit to see some of the best ceramic creations on sale.
Everywhere you look are beautiful ceramic creations, from functional vases, sculptural pieces, and abstract forms.
One of the most striking artists to display this year was Lucy Baxendale, whose interactive display of fantastical monsters impressed the visitors. This friendly-looking ceramic tree monster has a surprise—if you dare to stick your hand inside its mouth (don’t worry, he doesn’t bite!). By tickling the tonsils at the back of the monster’s throat, another head prints out a poetic and inspirational receipt for visitors to consider.
Baxendale, originally from Durham in the northeast of England, explains, “Yeah. If you put your hand into the monster’s mouth, it will print you out something that you can take away. And my hope is that that kind of spreads out into the world and maybe inspires something else.”
All of the riddle-like receipts were written by Baxendale, and she collaborated with her father (an electrical engineer) to produce her piece.
“What would a broken vase dream about? Sketch the cracked pieces and reassemble them into something new,” said one receipt.
A show visitor from Peru was blown away by the tree monster and said it was, “Super fun. I think this is amazing. Because behind the complicated work and the kind of like graffiti, tattoo kind of work, you find something very soft.”
Ceramic Art London is organized each year by the Craft Potters Association of Great Britain and continues to grow in size and importance. It ran from May 9 to 11 at London’s Olympia.
This article and video were provided by The Associated Press.
Script
[Woman looking at two-figure bust ceramic by potter Alison Coaten]
[Tiny ceramic vases by Japanese potter Yuta Segawa]
[Vases by potter Ashraf Hanna]
[Various cracked vase designs by Korean potter SaeRi Seo]
[Tree monster sculpture by Lucy Baxendale]
[Lucy Baxendale putting her hand in the monster’s mouth]
[Monster printing a note from its mouth]
[Lucy Baxendale ripping off the paper note]
[Lucy Baxendale holding the note]
Lucy Baxendale (interview): “Yeah. If you put your hand into the monster’s mouth, it will print you out something that you can take away. And my hope is that that kind of spreads out into the world and maybe inspires something else.”
[Hand entering mouth]
[Note printing]
[Note reading: “What would a broken vase dream about? Sketch the cracked pieces and reassemble them into something new.”]
[Peruvian visitor to the show trying the monster]
[Fantastical sculptures by Lucy Baxendale]
Lucy Baxendale (interview): “I was brought up in a lot of folklore. Mythology… Lots of… yeah, fairy tales, Maurice Sendak (writer and illustrator). So, I think that’s all in my brain somewhere. And it comes out when I start to draw.”
[Ceramic sheriff’s hat]
[Badge on the hat]
[Potter Rich Miller looking at his hat]
Rich Miller (interview): “So this is a ceramic cowboy hat that I’ve made. It’s called ‘The Sheriff of Nowhere County’. And the thinking behind it all stemmed from a photograph I was given by my mother. And it’s an image of me as a child. I was at a fancy dress party, and I was dressed as a cowboy. And it was something I looked at as an image with that sense of perspective, looking back as an adult on a childhood experience, and I kind of remembered the emotions I was going through. I felt so proud to finally be a cowboy. You know, and it just took me right back to that moment and that sense of pride that I had.”
[Photograph of Rich Miller as a child dressed as a cowboy]
Rich Miller (interview): “We used to play cowboys and Indians, it was a game we played all the time, and the cowboys were considered the goodies, and the Indians were considered the baddies, and that in itself is so problematic. But I just remember how desperately I wanted to be the cowboy, you know? But I was made, because of my skin tone, to be an Indian, I was made to feel less than human, a baddie, and it’s difficult to level and understand the complexity of that as a young child.”
[“The Sheriff of Nowhere County” on Rich Miller’s stand]
[Swedish potter Hanna Salomonsson looking at one of her vases]
[Potter Emily Gibbard looking at her 3-meter-tall installation, which she had just sold for £6,000]
[Porcelain sculptures by artist Timothy Fluck]
[Timothy Fluck]
Timothy Fluck (interview): “How you respond to something that’s delicious or tasty… but it’s a sculpture. And often we kind of come to sculpture and art with our mind of how we interpret art. But what if you kind of take these other kind of experiences and bring them to art? So, you feeling like you’re looking at cakes and your brain responds in that way, which I find it’s quite a different way of looking at art or sculpture. So I like it when people come up and say it’s a pile of sweets or a pile of cakes.”
[Intricate floral ceramics by Vanessa Hogge]
[Vases by Scottish potter Moyra Stewart]
[Moyra Stewart]
Moyra Stewart (interview): “If you can’t take the failures, you will never do this process. This is an intense and difficult process. But the results when they work are off the scale.”
[Visitors at Ceramic Art London]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.
