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Contem’Plate

As featured in the Financial Times, House and Home READ ARTICLE

PRESS RELEASE

 

As part of our Ceramics Season 2024, Messums presents a contrasting yet complimentary exhibition of historical and contemporary plates with the aim to examine the history of plates and their decorative and functional roles, culminating in a celebration of their contemporary space as an alternative canvas for mark-making, installation, and communication of meaning.

The plate has a long history that stretches far deeper than its entanglement with ceramic, from mere leaves to bread and wood trenchers to pewter tableware, and is intrinsically tied with the domestic function to serve food. Ceramic plates have a central place in the archaeological record, teaching us how people of the past ate and lived, including terracotta plates in ancient Greece and Rome, porcelain plates in Tang Dynasty china. But decorative plates from as far back as the ancient civilisations of Egypt, Greece and Rome show us the plate has always offered much more than utility.

 

Biography 

Paul Scott

[
- Present ]
Paul Scott is a Cumbrian based artist with a diverse practice and an international reputation. Creating individual pieces that blur the boundaries between fine art, craft and design, he is well known for research into printed vitreous surfaces, as well as his characteristic blue and white artworks in glazed ceramic. A combination of rigorous research, studio practice, curation, writing and commissioned work ensures that his work is continually developing. It is fundamentally concerned with the re-animation of familiar objects, landscape, pattern and a sense of place.
Artist Profile

Abigail Schama

[
- Present ]
Abigail Schama came to pottery from painting, having studied Fine Art at Camberwell College of Arts and Bristol and completing an MA in Art Theory at Chelsea College of Arts. She is a founder of The Mews Coachworks, a female maker community in Northwest London.
Artist Profile

Bouke de Vries

[
- Present ]
Born in Utrecht, The Netherlands, Bouke de Vries studied at the Design Academy Eindhoven, and Central St Martin’s, London. After working with John Galliano, Stephen Jones and Zandra Rhodes, he switched careers and studied ceramics conservation and restoration at West Dean College. Every day in his practice as a private conservator he was faced with issues and contradictions around perfection and worth.
Artist Profile

Charlotte Hodes

[
- Present ]
A leading figure in contemporary art, Charlotte Hodes’ work profiles her long-standing engagement with the cross-overs between the fine and decorative arts. She draws on craft processes to create imagery firmly situated within the language of fine art. She brings her considerable experience as a painter to both her extraordinarily intricate papercuts and large-scale installations in which ready-made ceramic ware serves as her alternative canvas.
Artist Profile

Martin Smith

[ 1950
- Present ]
Martin Smith has achieved international recognition as one of the UK’s leading ceramic artists. His innovative and influential career has been compared to that of the late Hans Coper by Chris Dercon, who also described him as ‘… the most abstract and geometrically orientated ceramist in England and possibly of our times.’
Artist Profile

Stephen Dixon

[ 1957
- Present ]
After growing up in Peterlee, Stephen Dixon went on to study at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, earning his BFA in 1980. He then earned his MA in Ceramics at the Royal College of Art in 1986. From 1986 to 1998, Dixon worked as a part-time visiting Lecturer in Ceramics at the Edinburgh College of Art, The London Institute, The Surrey Institute, Staffordshire University
Artist Profile

Kitty Shepherd

[ 1960
- Present ]
Kitty Shepherd (b. 1960) is a British studio potter and ceramic artist known for her bold use of colour with slip. She describes the natural world and popular iconography in a way that is totally unique in the ceramic discipline. Her studios are based in Granada, Spain.
Artist Profile

Sandy Brown

[ 1946
- Present ]
Sandy Brown was trained in the art of making ceramics at the Daisei Pottery in Mashiko, Japan. The recipient of Art Council funding, and chosen as Britain’s artist in residence in Australia by the British Council for 1988, Brown has been an important international artist for many years, whose works feature regularly in exhibitions all over the world.
Artist Profile

Makoto Kagoshima

[ 1967
- Present ]
Makoto Kagoshima, based in Kyushu, the southern island of Japan, illustrates whimsical and heart-warming motifs on clay, making each ceramic object a unique, one-of-a-kind piece of art. After graduating from the art college, Makoto worked in the Conran Shop in Fukuoka and didn’t become a full time potter until the age of 35. 
Artist Profile
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Managed by Jonathan Messum we are a leading multi-purpose gallery and arts centre.
It has become a platform for creative expression across artistic genre and a meeting point of minds to explore how art as a language is made, interpreted, resolved and shared.
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