Lydia Hardwick and Holly Stevenson

An exhibition of new ceramic work by two emerging ceramicists

21 March to 23 May 2020

Caroline Fisher Projects, 93A Upper Saint Giles Street, Norwich, NR2 1AB,

Private view Friday 20 March, 5.30pm to 7pm. To RSVP please email hello@carolinefisherprojects.org

Exhibition open on Friday and Saturday afternoons, 1pm to 5pm

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 ‘swatches’ 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 ‘Designs of the Year’ exhibition at London’s 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 Stevenson’s 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 ‘Freud’s Ashtray’ is inspired by Sigmund Freud’s 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 Narcissus’ 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.

All work is for sale and a price list will be available at the gallery or by emailing hello@carolinefisherprojects.org

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About Caroline Fisher Projects

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 Giles’ Street, Norwich is an exhibition space but also hosts a ‘Clay Conversation’ on the first Friday of the month at 11am during exhibitions. All welcome to attend.