Clay in Conversation 10: Circles
Clay in Conversation 10: Circles the tenth episode in this series of curated conversations presenting artists working with clay and ceramics
NOTE DIFFERENT VENUE
Clay in Conversation 10: Circles
April 26th 2025
Venue: The Stephen Lawrence Gallery, 10 Stockwell Street, University of Greenwich, SE10 9BD
The curated conversations provide a platform for presentation, dialogue and discovery, bringing together a diverse range of artists with a practice using clay and ceramics.
Each episode centres on a unifying theme - acting as a lens through which the artists present a project. The conversations offer the opportunity to dig deeper into the work, exploring it formally, materially and conceptually, from the perspective of the artists themselves.
The presentations by the artists will be followed by a conversation chaired by Gerogia Haseldine (Senior Curator, V&A East Storehouse) and a Q&A session with the audience.
Clay in Conversation was founded and is curated by artist Julia Ellen Lancaster
For this episode we welcome artists Sara Howard and Rosanna Martin.
Sara Howard is an award-winning British designer dedicated to pioneering circular and regenerative systems in the ceramics industry and beyond.
She graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2020 with a BA (Hons) in Ceramic Design. In her final year, she developed an industrial symbiosis model for ceramics, where waste from one industry replaces virgin raw materials in ceramic production. In 2022, she scaled up this approach in collaboration with Kevala, a ceramic tableware manufacturer in Bali, where her collections have been sold to hotels, restaurants and homes globally. Sara's methods are detailed in Circular Ceramics, a book that empowers ceramicists to integrate sustainable practices in their work.
In 2022, Howard founded Crafting Coral, a nonprofit that regenerates coral reefs through ceramics and community. Crafting Coral currently contributes to coral nurseries in the Maldives, Bali, and Lombok, and hosts workshops globally to raise awareness on the threats and importance of coral.
Howard also co-founded Golden Earth Studio to bridge the gap between artists and the construction industry, providing creatives with access to demolition and excavation by-products as an alternative to virgin materials. These reclaimed materials are transformed into artworks, which are then reintroduced into homes through the Golden Earth Gallery.
In Howard’s book she states ‘Ceramics can be durable and last generations, but the production of ceramics is facing a future dilemma. The materials rely heavily on depleting finite natural resources. Many of which when extracted, have significant ecological and societal impacts. Can the production of ceramics really be sustained?’
Rosanna Martin is an artist working in Cornwall. Her practice explores the relationships between landscape, people and materiality through sculpture, participatory projects and events. Altered topographies, objects and marks left on the land by human activity, as evidenced in the reshaping and replacing of geological and manmade material, evoke intrigue and act as starting points for artworks.
Martin co-founded Brickfield in 2018, an artist led participatory brickworks set within a disused china clay quarry near St Austell. Brickfield uses waste clay, quartz sand and mica from the extraction industry to provide brick making workshops for members of the public and local community groups to collectively make bricks by hand connecting people with materials, craft skills and the heritage of Cornish brick making.
Martin completed an MA Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art in 2013 alongside completing an Art Therapy Foundation at the British Association of Art Therapists. She is currently undertaking a PhD at Falmouth University. Her practice-based research is bringing together elements of the domestic space, the playground and the post-industrial, into new sculptural apparatus.
Exhibitions include upcoming The Whole World In Our Hands, group show at The Stephen Lawrence Gallery, London; The Fragmented Landscape, by invitation of Katie Spragg, Ruup and Form, London; and previously Feet of Clay, group show at Kestle Barton, Manaccan, 2022: Other Interesting Stones, solo show, Grays Wharf Studios, 2021; Moving Landscapes, group show, Grays Wharf Studios, 2021; Unbounded, Group show curated by Fieldnotes and Eden Project, Cornwall, 2019.
Dr Georgia Haseldine is the Senior Curator, V&A East Storehouse. Originally from Sheffield, now based in east London, Haseldine is an artist and public engagement specialist. As Senior Curator of the V&A East Storehouse she is responsible for a radically reinvented collections store that will offer visitors unprecedented access to the V&A’s collection of art, design and performance. She is also board director of We Don't Settle, a youth empowerment arts and heritage charity rooted in the Black Country.
Previously she led the research project The Question of Clay with Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates and has devised public engagement projects in Lebanon and across the UK.
On completion of her doctorate Haseldine went on to become Assistant Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, and Teaching Fellow at Queen Mary University followed by Director of AMP Art and Academic Co-ordinator, The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, before joining the V&A.
Her work as an art historian of protest at the National Portrait Gallery and Queen Mary University of London won her several awards.
Julia Ellen Lancaster is an artist working out of London and Kent, UK. Graduating from the Royal College of Art she spent time in Tokyo researching ceramics as a provocative material, exhibiting at Youkobo Arts Centre, Tokyo. Lancaster was subsequently selected for the Leach 100 Residency, St Ives, UK in 2020 as part of the Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada pottery centenary celebrations. In 2021 she was awarded a further residency with Leach Pottery and Porthmeor Stduios, being one of the first artists to take up a residency at the historically significant Anchor studio, the original home of the Newlyn Art School.
In 2024 she was awarded the first international Residency at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Ceramics, culminating in a sell-out show of new work. Exhibiting across the UK, Japan and Australia, Lancaster also teaches ceramics and sculpture in professional studios and institutions. Since 2022 Lancaster has curated the ongoing series of talks Clay in Conversation, providing a platform for artists who are pushing limits with clay. She is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors.
This is an ‘in person’ event to be held at venue:
The Stephen Lawrence Gallery, University of Greenwich
(to coincide with the exhibition The Whole World In Our Hands, 12 April – 17 May)
10 Stockwell Street
London
SE10 9BD
Due to capacity, places are limited so please book early.
Clay in Conversation 10: Circles the tenth episode in this series of curated conversations presenting artists working with clay and ceramics
NOTE DIFFERENT VENUE
Clay in Conversation 10: Circles
April 26th 2025
Venue: The Stephen Lawrence Gallery, 10 Stockwell Street, University of Greenwich, SE10 9BD
The curated conversations provide a platform for presentation, dialogue and discovery, bringing together a diverse range of artists with a practice using clay and ceramics.
Each episode centres on a unifying theme - acting as a lens through which the artists present a project. The conversations offer the opportunity to dig deeper into the work, exploring it formally, materially and conceptually, from the perspective of the artists themselves.
The presentations by the artists will be followed by a conversation chaired by Gerogia Haseldine (Senior Curator, V&A East Storehouse) and a Q&A session with the audience.
Clay in Conversation was founded and is curated by artist Julia Ellen Lancaster
For this episode we welcome artists Sara Howard and Rosanna Martin.
Sara Howard is an award-winning British designer dedicated to pioneering circular and regenerative systems in the ceramics industry and beyond.
She graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2020 with a BA (Hons) in Ceramic Design. In her final year, she developed an industrial symbiosis model for ceramics, where waste from one industry replaces virgin raw materials in ceramic production. In 2022, she scaled up this approach in collaboration with Kevala, a ceramic tableware manufacturer in Bali, where her collections have been sold to hotels, restaurants and homes globally. Sara's methods are detailed in Circular Ceramics, a book that empowers ceramicists to integrate sustainable practices in their work.
In 2022, Howard founded Crafting Coral, a nonprofit that regenerates coral reefs through ceramics and community. Crafting Coral currently contributes to coral nurseries in the Maldives, Bali, and Lombok, and hosts workshops globally to raise awareness on the threats and importance of coral.
Howard also co-founded Golden Earth Studio to bridge the gap between artists and the construction industry, providing creatives with access to demolition and excavation by-products as an alternative to virgin materials. These reclaimed materials are transformed into artworks, which are then reintroduced into homes through the Golden Earth Gallery.
In Howard’s book she states ‘Ceramics can be durable and last generations, but the production of ceramics is facing a future dilemma. The materials rely heavily on depleting finite natural resources. Many of which when extracted, have significant ecological and societal impacts. Can the production of ceramics really be sustained?’
Rosanna Martin is an artist working in Cornwall. Her practice explores the relationships between landscape, people and materiality through sculpture, participatory projects and events. Altered topographies, objects and marks left on the land by human activity, as evidenced in the reshaping and replacing of geological and manmade material, evoke intrigue and act as starting points for artworks.
Martin co-founded Brickfield in 2018, an artist led participatory brickworks set within a disused china clay quarry near St Austell. Brickfield uses waste clay, quartz sand and mica from the extraction industry to provide brick making workshops for members of the public and local community groups to collectively make bricks by hand connecting people with materials, craft skills and the heritage of Cornish brick making.
Martin completed an MA Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art in 2013 alongside completing an Art Therapy Foundation at the British Association of Art Therapists. She is currently undertaking a PhD at Falmouth University. Her practice-based research is bringing together elements of the domestic space, the playground and the post-industrial, into new sculptural apparatus.
Exhibitions include upcoming The Whole World In Our Hands, group show at The Stephen Lawrence Gallery, London; The Fragmented Landscape, by invitation of Katie Spragg, Ruup and Form, London; and previously Feet of Clay, group show at Kestle Barton, Manaccan, 2022: Other Interesting Stones, solo show, Grays Wharf Studios, 2021; Moving Landscapes, group show, Grays Wharf Studios, 2021; Unbounded, Group show curated by Fieldnotes and Eden Project, Cornwall, 2019.
Dr Georgia Haseldine is the Senior Curator, V&A East Storehouse. Originally from Sheffield, now based in east London, Haseldine is an artist and public engagement specialist. As Senior Curator of the V&A East Storehouse she is responsible for a radically reinvented collections store that will offer visitors unprecedented access to the V&A’s collection of art, design and performance. She is also board director of We Don't Settle, a youth empowerment arts and heritage charity rooted in the Black Country.
Previously she led the research project The Question of Clay with Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates and has devised public engagement projects in Lebanon and across the UK.
On completion of her doctorate Haseldine went on to become Assistant Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, and Teaching Fellow at Queen Mary University followed by Director of AMP Art and Academic Co-ordinator, The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, before joining the V&A.
Her work as an art historian of protest at the National Portrait Gallery and Queen Mary University of London won her several awards.
Julia Ellen Lancaster is an artist working out of London and Kent, UK. Graduating from the Royal College of Art she spent time in Tokyo researching ceramics as a provocative material, exhibiting at Youkobo Arts Centre, Tokyo. Lancaster was subsequently selected for the Leach 100 Residency, St Ives, UK in 2020 as part of the Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada pottery centenary celebrations. In 2021 she was awarded a further residency with Leach Pottery and Porthmeor Stduios, being one of the first artists to take up a residency at the historically significant Anchor studio, the original home of the Newlyn Art School.
In 2024 she was awarded the first international Residency at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Ceramics, culminating in a sell-out show of new work. Exhibiting across the UK, Japan and Australia, Lancaster also teaches ceramics and sculpture in professional studios and institutions. Since 2022 Lancaster has curated the ongoing series of talks Clay in Conversation, providing a platform for artists who are pushing limits with clay. She is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors.
This is an ‘in person’ event to be held at venue:
The Stephen Lawrence Gallery, University of Greenwich
(to coincide with the exhibition The Whole World In Our Hands, 12 April – 17 May)
10 Stockwell Street
London
SE10 9BD
Due to capacity, places are limited so please book early.