Shaped from the Earth: Sheffield Ceramics to take centre stage at Millennium Gallery

This article originally appeared on Culture24.

Sheffield potter Penny Withers brings together work by a wide range of city-based makers for a summer ceramics show at the Millennium Gallery

"The secret that people who work with clay have discovered is it is very good for you to connect with the earth,” says Penny Withers, ceramicist and curator of a forthcoming show at the Millennium Gallery Sheffield celebrating the steel town's cohesive ceramics scene.

“It is therapy,” she adds. “It is a medium for understanding and communicating ideas."

Sheffield is home to a thriving community of ceramicists and ceramic artists who use a vast array of techniques and approaches to communicate their ideas through clay. The diverse range of work they have created can bee seen in Shaped from the Earth: Sheffield Ceramics, which opens on June 18.  

Among them Antonia Salmon is an established ceramicist who experiments with different stoneware clays, burnished and smoke fired surfaces.

Working from a studio extension at home, she takes her sculptures out to a smoking kiln in Derbyshire to produce work that shows an awareness of form and space and is represented in private and public collections throughout the UK, Europe, USA, Japan and China.

Victoria Dawes is a studio potter currently based in Sheffield whose hand thrown tableware is inspired by a life traveling and living between New Zealand, North America and the UK and reflects on themes of home and family traditions.

She is currently in the second year of the Starter Studio for Ceramics at Yorkshire Artspace and has been selected for the Craft Council’s Hot House 2016 programme. 

An established ceramicist herself, curator Withers is based at Persistence Works and has been working in Sheffield for many years. 

"In its fired form clay can enrich our daily lives around the rituals of taking nourishment; our lips kiss a cup lip as our fingers stroke its surface," she says of the joy of pottery.

"Through the exhibition I aim to show the enjoyment that everyone can find in both pottery and ceramic sculpture."

Shaped from the Earth will also allow visitors to support the city’s makers directly, with many of the works on show available for purchase.

Shaped from the Earth: Sheffield Ceramics  is at the Millennium Galleries, Sheffield, June 18 - October 9 2016. Admission free.

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Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/ceramics-and-craft/art555229-Shaped-from-the-Earth-Sheffield-Ceramics