To celebrate the British Ceramics Biennial's 10th Year, and mark its new Ceramic City:FourSites project, AirSpace Gallery and the BCB are presenting a weekend of clay-based activities including exhibitions, workshops and talks. The events will take place acrossthe weekend of Saturday and Sunday 21st and 22nd September across two organisations ( The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery and AirSpace Gallery) and also 3 of the Cultural Quarter's independent businesses (RAWR, BottleCraft and NTRPRNRS). The BCB will also be activating the Public Realm with a series of workshops in an outdoor marquee.

For full details of the event - please click HERE.

MAQUETTES FOR A BIGGER IDEA - LINDSEY MENDICK

September 21st 11am-5pm at RAWR Hanley 6 1to1 workshops - 45 minutes each.

For many makers, problem solving is an intrinsic element of the making of a piece. We ask ourselves, how can I make this without this collapsing? Whats the most exciting way to evoke this specific memory or idea? Would this actually work? In this 1 to 1 workshop, over the course of 45 min, you will work with Lindsey to create a minature version of a personal project for the future, ironing out the inevitable difficulties leaving you with the skillset to make your ideal ceramic work.

Due to capacity, and the 1-1 nature of this workshop, it must be booked for one of the specified times below

Session 1 - 11.00 - 11.45

Session 2 - 12.00 - 12.45

Session 3 - 13.00 - 13.45

Session 4 - 14.00 - 14.45

Session 5 - 15.00 - 15.45

Session 6 - 16.00 - 16.45

Notes on Lindsey Mendick - London-based Lindsey Mendick, graduated with an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, and has since exhibited widely. Her practice is hinged to her skilled work in ceramics, which she describes being drawn to for its tactile nature and its desire to be manipulated by the maker. She also embraces banner painting, sewing, metalwork, furniture making, and sound within her autobiographical practice. By playfully combining low culture iconography and high culture methods of construction, Mendick creates humorously decadent and elaborate installations that enable the viewer to explore their personal history in a cathartic fashion.

"William Morris said that ‘nothing which is made by man will be ugly, but will have its due form, and its due ornament, and will tell the tale of its making and the tale of its use’. His tapestries, poetry and wood block designs inspired me to be present in the fabrication of my sculpture as well as intrinsic to its conception. Working in clay allows me to be resolutely embedded in all aspects of my sculpture and to create entities that encompass my sensibility. By playfully combining low culture iconography and high culture methods of construction, I hope to create humorously decadent and elaborate installations that enable the viewer to explore their personal history in a cathartic fashion.

My work is deeply emotive, with entities being forged from my personal narrative, most prominently stories based around my family and the domestic setting. I often combine film and sound within my sculptures, extrapolating imagery and audio that recounts the memories that have shaped me in a comedic and bittersweet fashion. My sculpture takes the form of theatrical, set like structures; stages for storytelling and platforms for nostalgic imagery. Here the ceramics I create (singularly and in collaboration with those closest to me); act as performers and representatives for my gothic inclination, exploring the abject and inherent horror in the everyday one shameful confession at a time.

I create ceramic effigies, small monuments to the everyday that although intensely personal are concerned with being relatable. The sculptures are leaky and riddled with anxiety, attempting to preserve and highlight the world around them. As a naturally visceral medium, clay allows me to feed my neuroses and fears into the work through osmosis. I create entities that I see as extensions of myself, protagonists in my installations and storytellers of my narrative.

My work has always been portrayed as extremely feminine, due to my primary medium being ingrained in craft and my affection for pastels. However it is also deemed to be feminine as it’s unashamedly personal and candidly emotional. In my ceramics, I feel there is a great deal of power in embracing the very traits that people deem to be female and subverting them, pushing the boundaries of what the ‘female’ gender can be.

For me the work that I create is about the shame of gluttony and sexual desire for women. Through immortalising trashy foodstuff with shameful confessions, I explore how arousal and appetite circumvents taste and sophistication. My practice explores the simultaneous paradox that women my age can feel, growing up in a society where gender is rapidly evolving whilst having been instilled with traditional gender stereotypes by those who raised us" - Lindsey Mendick, 2019