British Ceramics Biennial publicizes 10 artists for AWARD 2021

Ten ceramic artists had been chosen to make original work for the British British ceramics Biennial’s (BCB) AWARD, the leading platform for up-to-the-minute ceramic art prepare within the UK. They are Alison Cooke, Christie Brown, Cleo Mussi, Connor Coulston, Helen Beard, Ho Lai, Jin Eui Kim, Mawuena Kattah, Stephen Dixon and Tamsin van Essen.

The original work will range from an set up made the exercise of clay taken from beneath the North Sea to life dimension mosaic figures produced from historical pottery and must tranquil make the focal point of the BCB competition in Stoke-on-Trent this September, when no doubt one of many artists will be awarded a £5,000 prize for excellence, innovation and ingenious ambition.

AWARD gives a snapshot and occasion of up-to-the-minute exercise in ceramic art. This year’s shortlist, chosen from over 160 entries, aspects among the crucial UK’s most innovative up-to-the-minute ceramic artists and reflects a unfold of approaches – from vessels to mosaics, sculpture to set up art. By exploring geopolitical, environmental and social political issues of their work the artists are the exercise of British ceramics to make sense of our changing world.

The judging panel became once chaired by Alun Graves, Senior Curator within the Sculpture, Metalwork, British ceramics and Glass Department at the V&A, who comments:

‘AWARD has established its region because the premier exhibition of up-to-the-minute ceramic art within the UK. A platform for floor-breaking and innovative prepare, it gives a probability for artists to work with ambition, constructing their work in original, provocative and tense systems. In these unprecedented cases, the desire to glean and keep in touch by the intensely physical cloth of clay has in no device been stronger. The shortlist for AWARD 2021 reflects the dynamism of up-to-the-minute British ceramics, embracing artists of one of the best seemingly world standing besides to others who bear more no longer too long ago broken by onto the scene.’

Alison Cooke works with clay dug from interventions equivalent to mining, engineering or scientific be taught, which she fires at improper temperatures. For AWARD she’s going to make an set up produced from clay taken from beneath the North Sea following her collaboration with scientific be taught team Europe’s Misplaced Frontiers. This scientific be taught team bear mapped this submerged Doggerland and given her fragments of sediment core.

Christie Brown’s figurative prepare is educated by an hobby in our relationship with objects and the significance and relevance of museum collections and worn artefacts to up-to-the-minute art. For AWARD she’s going to explore the connection between life drawings and 3D British ceramics, constructing a tableau of clay figures towards a frieze backdrop of life drawing.

Cleo Mussi creates mosaics the exercise of ceramic tableware from the final 200 years of British ceramic industry. She proposes a assortment of life-dimension 2D figures to make a timeline exploring the interplay of human life with the natural world. This work will explore how the British panorama has changed and evolved with motion of of us, be it on account of Brexit, covid, properly being, economics or climate change.

Impressed by kitsch charity store and museum ornaments, Connor Coulston explores socio-political issues equivalent to depression, masculinity, equality and loneliness in his sculptural work, the exercise of humour as a process of participating his viewers with these darker disorders. His work for BCB AWARD entails a Christmas angel ornament belonging to his nan reimagined as a unhappy single mother of four.

Helen Beard is a of us watcher who uses illustration in her work and clay as her canvas. Her original body of work created for AWARD will take into memoir her document the area we dwell in now by a composition of hand-constructed porcelain and wheel-thrown pots.

Ho Lai explores the up-to-the-minute nature of British ceramics in her work, experimenting with the affords and processes taking into consideration its introduction. Her AWARD proposal, Fluxing Red, is assortment of 50 crimson-stained bone china wall objects shooting the blueprint account for of Hong Kong. It is a response to the manager’s decision to permit British Nationwide Out of the country passport holders from Hong Kong to change into British citizens and the resulting identification disaster felt by many up-to-the-minute migrants.

In his prepare, Jin Eui Kim explores how the perception of 3D ceramic forms could maybe maybe furthermore be manipulated by the appliance of quite a few preparations of tones on their surfaces. For AWARD, he’ll exercise pc technology to craft original, technically evolved ceramic tools that will enable him to explore a unfold of latest ways and normal approaches to make tone in colossal-scale ceramic forms.

Mawuena Kattah brings of us and sample collectively in complicated, shiny immersive installations of ceramic vessels, friezes and desk providers. Her proposal for AWARD, The Meal, is a ceramic desk atmosphere for eight of us inspired by her regular journeys to Brixton market to desire the food and African materials that encourage her work.

In his prepare Stephen Dixon uses British ceramics to compare up-to-the-minute narratives. His proposed work, Ship of Dreams and Nightmares, will be a 4m silhouette of an overloaded and dilapidated Mediterranean refugee ship produced from multiple hand-constructed and tin-glazed ceramic objects suspended with a scaffolding structure. The work is supposed to highlight the ongoing tragedy of migration and additional attach British ceramics as a medium for social commentary and public commemoration.

Tamsin van Essen’s work is essentially theory pushed, exploring notions of elegance and impermanence by inspecting scientific, medical and social historical issues. Following a fresh residency in India, her AWARD proposal will take into memoir her constructing a assortment of abstracted Ayurvedic surgical tools the exercise of porcelain and beautiful crimson earthenware, the resulting ambiguous, eroded forms exploring notions of just and price.

AWARD is the headline exhibition within the British British ceramics Biennial, an world up-to-the-minute British ceramics competition that takes region in Stoke-on-Trent, the house of British British ceramics. The competition returns for its seventh edition from 11 September to 17 October 2021. The fleshy BCB competition programme will be announced in behind spring.

BCB AWARD 2021 judging panel:

Alun Graves – Senior Curator British ceramics and Glass V&A (Chair)

Clare Twomey – artist, researcher and creator

Vicky Lindo and William Brookes – AWARD 2019 winners

Barney Hare Duke – Worn Inventive Director, British British ceramics Biennial

Deirdre Figueiredo – Director, Craftspace

Anjani Khanna – artist and co-founding curator of the Indian British ceramics Triennale

Skinder Hundal – Director of Arts, British Council