Mella Shaw
Ceramic Artist, work focused on the overuse of marine sonar
Mella Shaw is an artist using clay to make thought-provoking objects and site-specific installations centred around reoccurring themes of balance, tipping-points, fragility and loss.
Her approach has its roots in activism – making publicly-engaged environmental work addressing specific issues in the global climate crisis – with an intention to bring lesser-known subjects to a new audience and enact change. Shaw came to ceramic as a second career and has a background in Anthropology and museum curation. Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2013 she has shown work widely both nationally and internationally, having pieces in various public and private collections. She lives and works in Edinburgh, is visiting lecturer in Ceramics at Central St Martin’s in London and recent winner of the Award prize at the British Ceramics Biennial 2023.
Mella Shaw will discuss her environmental project Sounding Line – which recently won the 2023 British Ceramics Biennial Award prize. In this emotive work Shaw made a large-scale ceramics installation (using the remains of a beached Northern bottlenosed whale and sound vibration) as well as a film shot in the Outer Hebrides to address the devastating effect of sound and sonar pollution on deep diving whale species. She will discuss this work in light of the significant role art has in contemporary activism and will show the six-minute film that features as a central and moving part of the project.
