Susie Ramsay-Smith 20

Emerging Potters – 24 Susie Ramsay-Smith July - September 2021

Raku, pit or paper firing kilns

- Faster to a lower earthenware 800-1000¹C then reduction atmosphere producing crackle/smoke effect surfaces. These can use gas, wood offcuts or recycled waste products eg. newspapers, shavings or sawdust, from a nearby sawmill. These are pyrotechnic fun, sustainable processes but producing semifunctional ceramics.

One way to eliminate one firing processes is to ‘raw’ glaze, leaving out the biscuit stage. This saves time and fuel, but the pot is glazed fragile and unfired. These slip glazes need higher proportions of clay to cope with the shrinkage, but once mastered would be a huge step towards sustainable methodology.

Few complete pottery clays are now mined in England and are rarely origin labelled, caused by lack of demand after late 20thC collapse of Stoke’s ceramic industry.

Water; a precious resource, necessary for soaking raw clay, throwing, glazes and washing tools. Studios need settling-pits for the sediment and surface water should be collected for the garden, or re-used in the studio.

The kiln new/used, should be as large as affordable, scrutinize manufacturers’ environmental credentials beforehand. An electric throwing wheel isn’t vital if there’s a serviceable kick-wheel alternative. Tools can be repurposed from charity/kitchen utensils. Recycled bags for wrapping ware and plastic cards make alternative kidneys.

Consumer power - create a

sustainable society - if customers don’t purchase goods based on ecologically sound practices, ethical designer/makers won’t survive. Accountability is important - who leads this environmental way of potting – experts and journalists need to promote it, because if potters globally advocate this, customers respond and sustainability becomes core to the craft.

I suggest a Sustainable Ceramic Standards Association – Use interest within the community to collaborate, agreeing standards for regulating sustainable practices.

As an ecological potter I have developed a

more sustainable methodology:

1. Sourcing own clay for bought = no production or transport pollution 2. Restrict glazes to local mineral/recycled ingredients = no production or transport pollution 3. Switch to green energy supplier = sustainable energy = less pollution 4. Raw glaze = halves energy required for each kiln firing = halved pollution 5. Fire to earthenware regularly = less energy = less carbon footprint = element longevity 6. Reduce stoneware firings + temperature to 1200¹C = lower energy consumption = element longevity 7. Online sales, using existing delivery companies = no sellers/buyers transport pollution

http://www.experiencesussex.co.uk/ceramics

Royal College of Art 2021 Graduates

Sketch - an exhibition showcasing the diversity of mediums and approaches of graduating RCA Ceramics and Glass student's work. Responding to the idea of a sketch, this show will contain exploratory and finished pieces in ceramics and glass alongside works across the mediums of drawing, photography, film, 3D printed ceramic, stone carving and painting. 'Sketch' is separate from the final degree show that will take place next year, and offers the opportunity to see the variety of creative output that forms an art practice. This exhibition will take place at 11 Avenue Studios, a gallery space in South Kensington hosted by arts collector and curator Preston Fitzgerald. After a challenging year and a half of study since the start of the pandemic, 'Sketch' will be the first time the cohort has come together to curate and exhibit work in a physical show.

2nd to 11th July 2021

11 Avenue Studios, Sydney Mews, South Kensington, London SW3 6HL. 3pm to 6pm and by private appointment at other times

Yau Chung Tong RCA

The work focus on the functionality of objects and the experience that craft brings into our everyday life. The creative process with clay captures an impulsive emotion with Yau on the potter’s wheel and an inner narrative at a particular moment. Every pot carries messages to the user. The uniqueness in each of the works, as well as the unique personality and life experiences of each person that she has encountered. It is important for my work to bring visual sensations to the users and take part in their daily life. This motivates me to be a ceramics artist who strives to reveal the true self of clay and find the best balance between the material, potential users, and herself. Country of origin: Hong Kong

2019-2021 Royal College of Art, London, UK. MA Ceramics and Glass

2014-2017 California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA. Bachelor of Fine Arts Ceramics

Instagram: @yauchung_tong

Emma Marks RCA

Prior to RCA, Camberwell College of Art, BA in Sculpture 2015.

The work draws parallels between ceramic processes and rethinking how we live in the more-thanhuman world. She turns to the event of building a ceramic vessel to reimagine what we think we already know: How to make a pot? How to live in a world?

She works with ceramics, photography, film and sound, using the event of creating a ceramic vessel to explore less familiar and less human-centric narratives.

Becoming 0.2 questions our understanding of how a pot or any thing come into being. The work is a sound piece embedded within an unfired vessel. The vessel was built intuitively using recording equipment to capture the sounds of making. This recording has been post-edited and plays on a loop from inside the same vessel.

UK

www.emmamarksart.com

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Fang Echo Wang RCA

Prior to RCA - Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University) Bachelor of Arts, Objected Based Practice

She has been deeply affected by the political and social issues that have been happening worldwide. This feeling of constant unease and claustrophobia has informed the work, both consciously and subconsciously. These events have made the work more personal and dark than it may have been before, and while this level of introspection can be difficult on a personal level, she believes that it is important for her to use it to power the work and attempt to gain something constructive out of these feelings. At the start of January she started learning about and making stop motion animation with clay. Undertaking many trials and attempts to understand this way of working with animation, building a set, and also finding and focusing on the theme for the film. She is still at the stage of exploration with the theme, but the figures and story seem to be growing out of her fingertips. With the political and social issues that have risen up in the past few months concerning violence against women and Asian minorities, she is living in a stage of concern. Creating is a way for her to digest and process those feelings. The goal is to use the work as a weapon to deconstruct the patriarchal society that we live in.

Born in Australia

Website: www.ekokaxi.com

Instagram: ekokaxi

YouTube: ekokaxi wang

Vimeo: ekokaxi wang

Annette Lindenberg RCA

Prior to RCA Cardiff Metropolitan University

“Silver droplets”- thinking about sea spray

Her recent work has been focused on extracting thoughts through a tactile balance of carving

and carefully curated surfaces. Thinking in layers of clays, glazes and precious life-moments; this series reflects on my relationship with the sea, visiting it as a child from landlocked Austria and how this has impacted what ceramic combinations she is drawn to.

Each of her objects looks at how texture, colour-tone and nuanced aesthetics capture moments of joy and some sadness felt while making the work.

Austria/ England

Website: www.lindenbergdesigns.com

Daria Coleridge RCA

Prior to RCA tained at Heatherley School of Fine Art

Voluminous Sculptural Form of intertwined shapes that have a sensation of motion. Just like a relationship, each form is a unique character in an evolving world - like a dance!

London, England

www@DariaColeridge.com

Monica Tong RCA

Prior to attending the RCA - Pasadena City College (California)

Her practice investigates the poetic intervention of subtle human senses and emotions through objects made in porcelain and glass. We connect with the world and the universe through our senses, in order to understand our being in nature and our experience in time. She has found porcelain and glass to be the best media in translating this experience into visual poetry due to their purity and translucency. Originally from China/New Zealand

https://studio-m.mystrikingly.com/

Below: Lost Paradise I - detail

Chengyu Li RCA

Originally from China

Attended the University/college Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University.

Her diary is expressed in the form of painting. To her, painting is like a poet writing poetry. They are as natural as she speaks, and the expression of feelings. She uses images to construct emotions and her fantasies. It allows her to find a sense of detachment from daily life.

Elizabeth Jackson RCA

Prior to RCA, Central Saint Martins BA Fine Art - 2013

This piece consists of slip cast nectarine & plum stones, forms often overlooked but which are characteristic of the familiar, everyday objects that she is drawn to working with in her more abstract, gestural work. These stones are the result of the testing process; using waste material from other pieces of work, blending them to explore further the potential of colour in clay.

UK

Website: ejackson.online

Leora Honeyman RCA

Viewing ‘use’ as culturally and temporally subjective, the work frequently subverts expectation to speculate on alternative, future, or fictional, cultural contexts. By stretching the capabilities of material and process and employing mechanisms such as fragility and precarity, she seek to question impossibility, implying a reality beyond that which is ordinarily assumed or acknowledged. In the process, a vast amount of playful and curious testing is required. She considers the resulting fragments to be a body of work in their own right, standing alongside the ‘complete’ objects of collectible design which they inform.

Country of Origin - Zimbabwe BA - University of Brighton

Nili Feferberg RCA

She creates unusual, playful, ambiguous, solid, layered cast mineral sculptures that seemingly relate to everyday objects, as a method of challenging and questioning our pre-perception of what we conceive as familiar.

The aim is to string together the material ontology and the human self through uniting the body (clay), the skin (glaze) and the transformative agent, the Voice-Self which is a concept that she has developed.

The minerals used are referred to as clay/glaze bodies, are made from formulas that she has developed to create sculptures that are glaze and clay, a skin and a body, called a SkinBody. Different to traditional casting, she uses recycled cardboards as moulds, they are fragile, unstable, organic and temporary, however, the born sculptures are solid, carry every single trace or fold of the mould.

I Am Not A Reflection Of Your Thoughts, 2021

Solid cast minerals and stains 12 x 9.5 x 7 cm

Israeli/British artist

Prior to RCA -Fine Art Goldsmiths University of London, MFA Web: nilifeferberg.com Instagram: nili_feferberg_art

Clara Bloch Jensen RCA

She took her bachelor degree at KADK, The Royal Danish Academy of Art and Design, in 2019.

She feels a connection between the object and herself - part of the same story - touching historical times.

The fragments suggest something, a distinct aura of previous life, of voices, of death.

Her artistic practice begins right here, communicating, sensing the material with her brain, her hands and body. Originally from Denmark

clara@nanu.dk

Katalina Caliedo RCA

"I am fascinated by how landscapes, environments, and the things that animate them are continuously shaped by the symbiotic interactions and collaborative tensions between both life and non-life, the tangible and the intangible" Katalina Caliendo

She is an American artist that has been based in London for the past five yrs. She is a Qest Allchurches scholar and has ceramics available with Ting Ying Gallery and Mint Gallery. Photo: Robert Chadwick

Emerging Potters – 24 RCA 2021 Sketch July - September 2021

Yuxi Lin RCA

University/college attended prior to RCA: China Academic of Art

This series of utensils challenged the traditional symmetrical shape, and there is no exact shape of the base. Different from people's usual way of viewing, it breaks the inherent impression of calm and fragility of ceramic works, and changes the usual way of displaying artworks, placing them in a "dangerous" but freer way. As far as the exhibits are concerned, they are no longer limited to a fixed display state, but encourage people to participate, interact, and feel the interest in them. You can push it at will, and they will eventually return to the original balance angle, allowing viewers to explore their balance in the dynamic.

Country of origin: China

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Emerging Potters – 24 RCA 2021 Sketch July - September 2021

Desa Philippi RCA

Originally from Germany but has lived in the UK for many years

Previous education: CityLit Ceramics Diploma

In the work Desa combine simple geometric forms from press moulded and handbuilt elements into hybrid objects that are clearly fragments but also have the character and function of models. Surfaces are smooth or highly textured with the imprints of found objects and further accentuated with contrasting runny or extremely dry glazes.

www.desaphilippi.com

Instagram @desaphilippi

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Ella Porter RCA

July - September 2021

Drawn to clay’s unique ability to preserve the act of making, as both conscious and unconscious moments of touch are held in the surface of the ceramic object.

Her practice displays a strong relationship between surface and form; bringing together processes associated with both printmaking and ceramic. She explore ideas surrounding the mark of the maker, temporality, trace and place. During the creation of my work there is a continual shift between layering Prior to studies at The Royal College of Art, she completed a BA in Painting and Printmaking at Glasgow School of Art followed by a Diploma in Ceramics at the City Lit.

United Kingdom

@ellaporterstudio

www.ellaporterstudio.com

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Antonio Fois RCA

Questioning hierarchies and their boundaries are his current concerns.

He is fascinated by the interrelation between societies and their territories,

stemming from his previous studies in Human Geography and from Buddhism, which is central to my life and practice.

His work explores that liminal space that redefines the perception of structure/façade. He combines traditional hand-building and casting processes with experimentation using glazes and glass as part of the body.

Before the RCA he graduated with an MA in Human Geography at the University of Sassari (IT) and I completed a Post Diploma school of ceramics in Faenza (IT).

He has been shortlisted for the 59th Faenza International Ceramics Prize.

Italy

@antoniofoisceramics

www.antoniofoisceramics

Edgar Ward RCA

Prior to RCA: City and Guilds of London Art School

The work explores place and memory through drawing, clay modelling, stone carving and digital sculpture. He draws inspiration from ancient sites within the urban landscape where the old and the new exist together.

(British/Australian) Website: www.edgarward.co.uk

Hardy Tree