We unfortunately have to close for visitors/ and work collection due to pandemic, and “Stay at home” policy. We will be closed until it is safe to open again.
No recently made work will be thrown away at time of the pandemic. If you are concerned about work made before January 2020, please email, so we can keep it for you.
If your work is left with Firing Service, we will not throw it away.
Thank you for your understanding and support. Stay safe, and stay at home as much as you can!
Exhibition open on Friday and Saturday afternoons, 1pm to 5pm
Holly Stevenson, Get Well Soon, 2019
Caroline Fisher Projects is delighted to present the work of ceramicists, Lydia Hardwick and Holly Stevenson
Lydia Hardwick
graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2013. Using surface
techniques, such as inlaying and slip decorating, her working methods
are meditative and intuitive, developed through an understanding of
materials gained over years of working with clay.
Hardwick
is drawn to patterns and motifs found within indigenous craft objects
and textiles, made by communities that attribute great expressive power
to visual things. Intrigued by the mysterious formal vocabulary of folk
geometry, she combines a myriad of making traditions with influences
from European art and design to produce work that aims to reconnect us
to an ancient appreciation of line, surface, tone and texture as
presences unto themselves.
At Caroline Fisher Projects,
traditional ceramic forms will be exhibited alongside abstract material
experiments. Pots, forms that are intrinsic to human creativity, adorned
with pattern will be placed throughout the space, alongside relief
palm-sized โswatchesโ of clay arranged on the walls of the gallery. The
work will act as a series of meditations on the illusive nature of
meaning in visual things, reawakening personal experiences of place,
pattern and surface.
In 2015, Hardwick collaborated and exhibited with the Turner Prize winning group, Assemble
and showed in the Beazley โDesigns of the Yearโ exhibition at Londonโs
Design Museum. She is a qualified teacher, regularly delivering
workshops at the Royal Academy of Arts, Whitechapel Gallery and Camden
Arts Centre, London. In 2016 her work with Assemble was acquired by the V&A for their collection.
Holly Stevensonโs
ceramic practice is informed by an intense interest in psychoanalysis
and her sculpture explores how shape and colour might suggest embodied
narratives.
Her ongoing studio project entitled โFreudโs
Ashtrayโ is inspired by Sigmund Freudโs favourite marble ashtray, still
to be found on his desk at the Freud Museum in Hampstead. The feminine
shaped ovular artefact equipped with the remains of a cylindrical
phallic cigar provide the two modest forms, the oval and the cylinder,
that the artist repeatedly recreates in clay as the foundation stones to
her work. Within the hand built bulging surreal forms meaning becomes
contained: Clay shapes up to take on characters, often adorned with
chains and flowers, so that Narcissusโ pools and Uncanny bouquets develop into brightly glazed ceramic compositions reflecting on tales of quirky bodies, femininity and sensuality.
Stevenson
started to work obsessively with clay in 2016, after a guest residency
in Sichuan, China. She graduated from the Chelsea College of Art and
Design MFA in 2011 with the generous help of the Stanley Picker
Foundation and is currently a resident artist in the Ceramics Studio
Co-op, London. Her work has been shown widely in the UK, Cubitt, The
Barbican, Zabludowicz Collection, Flat Time House, John Latham
Foundation and Gazelli Art House amongst others, as well as in China and
Italy.
Caroline Fisher Projects encourages artists working in clay and other media to realise innovative work that pushes the boundaries of these disciplines.
Over recent years there has been a questioning of the role of ceramic practice within art and craft.
Can a functional object also be an art work? What is the status of making in an art world increasingly obsessed with ideas? How will a new generation of artists learn about ceramic techniques now that there are so few higher level courses that focus on these? How can clay be combined with other media such as film, photography, performance, music and food?
The first floor space at 93a Upper St Gilesโ Street, Norwich is an exhibition space but also hosts a โClay Conversationโ on the first Friday of the month at 11am during exhibitions. All welcome to attend.
We are excited to start taking bookings for classes running in the new year. You can click on the classes icons to find out more about each class and make your booking.
If you are keen to join longer and more in-depth session, Thursday mornings are best for you. It is our longest class of 3 hours!
If you are unsure about signing up for 12 weeks – join Friday mornings, which can be booked in half-terms, so you can see if you like it before committing for couple of months.
All our classes have structured introduction into pottery techniques that will allow you to build understanding of ceramics and make your own special pieces.
If you have any questions about the classes in the upcoming year, do get in touch.
Wrestle with the evil clay and shape your ultimate fear!
Take home your very own piece of iconic 80s horror and learn a new
skill.
Tristan Lathey’s porcelain and earthenware pieces modelled for the workshop.
Horror fan and ceramics artist Tristan has 8 years of slab building
experience. He primarily makes cute animals which he exhibits in the
north of England. He has been working at the Ceramics Studio Co-op since
it opened in 2014.
This workshop will be run in a form of a masterclass that is focused
on slab-building and decorating complex shapes and characters. Pieces
created at the workshop will be glazed and fired in the studio after the
class. They will be available for collection in 2-3 weeks.
All materials and firings are included in the price.
Bella Easton – Winner of Jerwood London Original Print Fair Award
We are very proud to share that artist and printmaker working in ceramics Bella Easton received Jerwood London Original Print Fair Award of ยฃ10,000 for the piece of work we helped her to produce. Well done Bella.
You can see the celebrated lithograph on porcelain panels called ANGEL HEART in Royal Academy during Summer exhibition.
We have been firing more work Esther Neslen’s collaborative work
These pieces were produced by school and nursery children under skilful supervision by artist Esther. Here they are downstairs ready to be taken away for assembling. 2 out of 10 human-size persons. Brilliant and challenging project!
Delighted to share information about Fred’s next show. We have been working with Fred for 2 years of him being based in our studio. Come down to New Art Projects to see his new show alongside Dylan Meade and Sue Tilley.
Fredrik Andersson is a ceramicist and illustrator who makes colourful ceramic pieces about homo eroticism and desire, since graduating from university he has regularly shown his ceramics and is stocked by Liberties of London. He has also worked with and run projects with Positive East, and The Outside Project. During the Transformations exhibitions by Dylan Meade and Sue Tilley, Andersson will exhibit some unique ceramic pieces and examples of his contemporary take on sgraffito entitled โgraffitoโ.
The inaugural show at the gallery, this exhibition casts a celebratory and inquisitive eye over painting today. Combining original work by eight artists concerned with employing paint to express their own particular narratives, this exhibition centers on the power of painting in the digitally connected 21stย Century.
Curated by one of the artists on Smithโs roster, David Surman, the exhibition asks the question โWhy paint? Who needs painting?โ in a world that seems to have evolved so far beyond the medium in terms of artistic possibilities.
The exhibition features artworks from Matija Bobiฤiฤย (b. 1987, Slovenia), Tim Garwood (b. 1984, UK), Kate Groobey (b. 1979, UK), Aly Helyer (b. 1965, UK), Doppel Kim (b. 1985, Korea), Sandra Lane (b. 1954, UK), Jonathan McCree (b. 1963, UK),ย Daisy Parris (b. 1993, UK), Maรฏa Rรฉgis (b.1995, France).
Featuring paintings and painted ceramics, the works pursue an array of ideas from the historical and architectural to human existence and identity. The challenges and interplays of paint are seen through visceral brushstrokes in a preoccupation with surface in some works and with subject in others. Some subjects are crudely drawn and almost childlike whilst others dissolve and disappear under layers of texture. Gestural figuration to total abstraction, the paint transforms, delights and teaches us about this new energy in a snapshot of the quality of the painting landscape today.
Our next ceramics glazing workshop will be on the 29 June 2019.
We are pleased to see more and more students who came to our studio for Throwing on Potter’s Wheel workshops being interested in learning how to glaze pottery, and achieving really nice results during the glazing workshop. Figuring out glaze and teaching this process can be complex, and we are proud to have figured out how to make these workshops a good place for those who are trying ceramics for a first time.
Due to popular demand we are scheduling one more workshop for this summer on 29 June 2019.
These pieces were made at the workshop with The Voice of Domestic Workers we cยญยญo-organised with Cubitt Gallery.
The Voice of Domestic Workers is an education and campaigning group for justice and rights for Britain’s tens of thousands foreign domestic workers that work for the wealthiest residents of London. Apart from providing support to individuals in difficult situation the group seeks to endย discrimination and protectย migrant domestic workersย livingย in the UK by providing or assisting in the provision of education, training, healthcare and legal advice.
At the workshop we made and decorated simple terracotta pots, listened to the stories and shared a Malaysian rice cooked by Yasmin, one of the domestic workers. One can read groupโs slogans and names of the participants on the pots that carry their presence and mood as a group. We are privileged to have met the group and to host their work in the studio while they are patiently waiting for it. We hope these pieces may inspire you making your own pottery and sculpture differently.
Visit their website to find out more about their work and help us support them.
