Collect 2023

Ryan Barrett (born 1986, Suffolk) studied at Goldsmiths University, where he experimented in a variety of mediums from sculpture to paintings, and was especially drawn into the world of textile design. Upon moving to New York in 2011, as his modelling career took off, Ryan worked as a print designer. His entrepreneurial spirit led him to co-found his own print and textile studio, and innovative online selling platform, Vooprint Ltd, in the beginning of 2013.

Barrett first began experimenting with ceramic in 2013, taking over his grandmother’s shed to settle into his first pottery studio. Self-taught, his approach to ceramic is very intuitive and experimental. Antique manmade constructions and sculptural art are the foundation to Barrett’s creative inspiration. He is especially influenced by Modern and Mid-Century abstract art, specifically by the visual language of shapes and monumental forms of British artists Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.

From his textile background, Barrett is naturally drawn to surfaces and textures. He constantly experiments with natural glazes and minerals to create tonal mixes and cascading effects. An ever-evolving process, much of his work is developed in series and explores variations of forms with soaring organic surface textures.

Ryan Barrett was recently one of the selected artists for the Young Masters Open Call Exhibition 2022/23.

Klari Reis uses the tools and techniques of science in her creative process, constantly experimenting with new ways to apply materials and methods. She is driven by curiosity and her desire to explore and document the natural and unnatural with a sense of wonder and joy. Formally trained as an architect, the artist from her base in San Francisco (in proximity to one of the largest concentrations of life science/technology companies in the world) collaborates with local biomedical companies and is inspired by the cutting edge of biological techniques and discoveries.

The unifying theme of Klari Reis’s art is her mastery of a new media plastic, epoxy polymer, and the fine control she brings to its reactions with a variety of dyes and pigments. Her compositions display brightly coloured smears, bumps and blobs atop aluminium and wood panels. A skilled technician with a studio for a laboratory, Reis uses science in the service of her art.

Klari Reis's work has been exhibited worldwide and public collections include Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK; Next World Capital’s offices in San Francisco, Paris, and Brussels; MEG Diagnostic Centre for Autistic Children in Oxford, UK; Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London; the Stanford University Medical Center Hoover Pavilion in California; and Elan Pharmaceuticals, Genentech, Acetelion and Cytokinetics in South San Francisco. She was most recently shown at Art Miami in 2022.

Klari Reis is represented internationally by Cynthia Corbett Gallery. We will be debuting a brand new series of her works at EXPO Chicago in early April 2023.

2021 Focus On The Female Young Masters Award winner Emilie Taylor also showed with the Young Masters Art Prize as a guest artists in 2015 and 2016. She was born in 1980 in Sheffield, where she now lives and works. Her large-scale ceramics use heritage craft processes, particularly traditional slipware, to interpret and represent post-industrial landscapes. Emilie is interested in the pot as container and metaphor for how we seek to contain different communities within society. Beyond the studio she works with the communities represented in her work, and through interdisciplinary projects hopes to apply the alchemical quality of ceramics in a socially engaged context.

COPPER CARBONATE

These pieces use copper carbonate in the line instead of the oxide I used previously. The verdant green connects with the land and I like its more ‘fluid’ quality, it feels like moss or lichen growing and permeating the urban/ concrete landscape.

The copper is a more ‘volatile’ material than the oxide, so it reacts with the other materials in the kiln. This causes changes in the lustre where the edges meet the copper, and gives the aged pattina look, softening the lustre and giving the pieces the feel of an older artefact.

INSPIRATION

These pieces are developments from the time spent working with the National Civil War Centre in Newark and their collections. They are the most recent pieces. I made large pots for the show there using the oxides, then began using the copper on drawings on plates and felt inspired to begin using it on the bigger pieces.

The works focus on the women of the 16-17C, and are a response to how land enclosure and the move to a capitalist society impacted on womens role then and now. They celebrate womens knowledge, connection to the landscape and their activism during the period.

An essay about the research and the work by Sara Read (Author and academic at Loughborough University) is available.

THE SACRAMENTS

The Sacraments takes as it’s starting point the wise or healing women that would have been part of every village or town. (16/17C)

Their medicinal knowledge of plants an herbs would have taken care of the community in every capacity from illness to birth control. Alongside their herb gardens the common land would have been a source of ingredients and inspiration.

The knowledge and power these women possessed (both in the community in general and regarding their perceived ability to control population with birth control), was perceived as a threat to the move to land enclosure and a patriarchal society with a more capitalist focus needing women to stay at home and reproduce the work force.

The rise of the ‘Witch Hunts’ across Europe in this period is seen by some (Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch) as a tool of propaganda used by King and Church to terrorise women and targeted women in these positions, (amongst others).

These plates celebrate these women and their knowledge, and use a contemporary model.

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Emilie has completed residencies in the UK and abroad, and has exhibited at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Ruthin Craft Centre, Gallery Oldham, and the Arts & Crafts House Blackwell. She has a new solo exhibition (Tubthumping) opening on March 8th at the National Civil War Centre. The body of work included in the show takes as a subject the experiences of women in the early modern period and explores the similarities linking them and the experiences of women today. Her work forms part of public and private collections.

Cynthia Corbett Gallery & its not-for-profit art initiative Young Masters Art Prize were invited by the Michelangelo Foundation to feature Emilie Taylor's artwork in their inaugural Homo Faber exhibition in Venice during the Biennale d'Arte in April 2022.

Elin Hughes’s sculptures are made through a cyclic process of fracturing and reconstructing the thrown vessel. By taking inspiration from British pottery traditions but removing the stable, functional nature of the pots as domestic objects, Elin draws our attention to the unpredictable material qualities of clay. Her glazes and forms reference back to Western traditions in the twentieth century including Bernard Leach’s fusion of Eastern and European aesthetics and the macho, destructive nature of works by American artists like Peter Voulkos. Her work raises questions about the importance of skill and the role of the potter in today’s society through combining throwing with sloppy craft’s disregard for rules.

Originally from North Wales, Elin graduated from the BA (Hons) Ceramics degree at Cardiff School of Art and Design in 2019. The same year, she was shortlisted for the Cynthia Corbett Gallery’s Young Masters Art Prize. Since then Elin has shown in multiple exhibitions across the UK, most recently at ‘The Gallery’, a Crafts Council curated showcase at Liberty London and in her first solo show ‘On Earth a Little Space/Ar Ddaear Gofod Bach’ at Oriel Plas Glyn y Weddw, Llanbedrog. She was recipient of the National Eisteddfod of Wales’ Young Artist Scholarship in 2022 and in February 2023 moved to Illinois, US to begin an 18 month apprenticeship with wood-firing potter Simon Levin.

Elin on this series: “Piecing together fragments from a range of eclectic influences, I create mischievous vessels which explore personal and Welsh identity and the role of skill in today’s society. I manipulate clay as a metaphor for the continually shifting natures of these identities.”

Combining elements from Victorian era ‘Gaudy Welsh’, American Abstract Expressionism and British country pottery traditions, I rip, fracture and reconfigure wheel thrown forms. I approach making as unselfconscious improvisation, nurturing that sense of childhood curiosity from when my awareness of individual identity first started to develop. These ‘Grandma Punk’ pots combine kitsch patterns from historical Welsh ceramics with forms that reject pretence and refinement. They embrace irregularity and uncertainty, joy and humour; values I view as central to our identity.”

Elin Hughes was a finalist for the Young Master Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize in 2019

Freya Bramble-Carter is a London-based ceramics artist, known for works that tap into the universal power of nature and the feminine forces of the Earth. Freya’s imagination, life experiences, and personal philosophies all influence her process and the forms she creates. Her work ranges from fine homewares including plates and bowls to large outdoor sculptural pieces, and even water features for interior or outdoor spaces. Applying her talent to artisan glazes and handcrafting unique silhouettes, Freya's limited-edition pieces are designed to elevate the everyday and inspire awe through their textures, colors, and shape.

Before studying fine art at Chelsea College of Arts, Freya grew up with clay covered hands learning from her father and fellow ceramicist Chris Bramble. She compliments her creative practice by teaching classes, but often enjoys ‘unlearning’ the rules when it comes to making her own pieces. She relishes the magic of making and how clay as a medium is full of endless, fluid possibilities. Her connection to the medium is a helpful tool, as clay is a teacher on many levels. Always learning to let go, reimagine, and adjust, Bramble-Carter’s relationship with her medium is ever evolving. Freya allows flow and freedom in her work as well as structure and strength. She believes in creating works that she can ‘impart with a piece of my soul.’ Freya was a beloved contestant on The Great Pottery Throw Down and recently was invited back to judge a challenge on the most recent season.

Crown the Clown Collection by Freya Bramble-Carter was specially crafted for the Meaning Behind Materiality exhibition with Cynthia Corbett Gallery as part of London Craft Week 2021. Last year at Collect, we debuted her series Pearl Parade, which was created during her 2021-22 studio residency with Florence St. George in the Bahamas. This year we are delighted to be showing those works as well as some from her latest collaborative series The Mermaids Purse, which debuted at Art Miami 2022. Both collections were born of Freya and Florence’s mutual love of the Bahamian land and sea. Using clay that they foraged four years ago from East End Grand Bahama, they patiently waited for the clay to mature so that they could work with it. Freya returned to the Islands in 2022 and the two potters worked night and day for two weeks collaborating on this collection also using finer clay to complement their new clam formed vases. Their studio is a space filled with love, fresh thoughts and a buzz of imaginative energy as they create and play with the clay together. These vases reflect the waves that crash on the sandy shores of the Bahamas, the petals and leaves that grow from the inside of the pot’s belly are like tongues, the voices echoing their journey. The pots are delicate, feminine yet strong and proud.

Freya Bramble-Carter is represented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery.

Crystal Latimer was born in Hollywood, California, and grew up in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania. In 2010, Crystal completed her BFA Slippery Rock University and received an MA and MFA from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2013 and 2016, respectively. After graduating, Crystal taught several courses at Penn State University and Indiana University and has lectured at Slippery Rock University and Carlow University.

Crystal's work has been shown extensively in both solo and group exhibitions, including at the Pittsburgh International Airport, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Chautauqua Institution, The Mine Factory, George Washington University, and Union Hall among others. She has shown her work internationally in Hong Kong and London, and participated in a residency at the Joaquin Chaverri Fabrica de Carretas in Sarchi, Costa Rica. Crystal's work has been featured in Create!, Pikchur, Local Arts PGH, Art Maze, Ruminate, and Fresh Paint Magazines. Her work is included in both private and public collections nationally and internationally; including Indiana State University of Pennsylvania, PNC Corporate, the Benter Foundation, and Wyndham Tryp Hotel.

Crystal was a finalist for the Young Masters Art Prize in 2019.

Carry On Creativity: A Series of Interviews with Young Masters' Artists : Crystal Latimer

UK-born Matt Smith is well known for his site-specific work in museums, galleries and historic houses. Using clay, textiles and their associated references, he explores how cultural organisations operate using techniques of institutional critique and artist intervention. He is interested in how history is a constantly selected and refined narrative that presents itself as a fixed and accurate account of the past and how, through taking objects and repurposing them in new situations, this can be brought to light. Of particular interest to him is how museums can be reframed into alternative perspectives.

"What museums collect, and what this tells us about what society deems important, is an ongoing fascination to me. Recent events have shown how important objects, and particularly sculpture, are in the national debate about who we are and how we got here. I have worked with museums many times over the last decade and I love interpreting and curating works to help the widest possible audience feel welcomed and visible within the museums," – Smith says.

A true storyteller, Matt Smith's work involves references to the idea of love and gender, but also references the purpose of Captain Cook’s first voyage – to measure the transit of the planet Venus. In 1768, Captain James Cook set sail for the Pacific on the Endeavour. At the same time as Cook set sail, Josiah Wedgwood was setting up his eponymous ceramics factory. The Cook Service is the celebratory service that

Wedgwood never made, taking landscapes and portraits recorded on the voyages as a starting point. Wedgwood did, however, make medallions of Captain Cook in the 1770s, and these continued in production up until the 1970s, a cast from which features on many of the pieces in the dinner service in this exhibition. On the Cook Service, juxtaposed with images recorded by the Europeans, are images of Venus, the Roman goddess of love. Cook set off to find the planet of love but seems to have been one of the few members of the expedition to
remain celibate during the voyages.

In 2015/2016, Matt was Artist in Residence at the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2009 he received the ARC Award for Craft from Aspex Gallery and was awarded the inaugural Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize in 2014. At Collect 2018, he was awarded "Object of the Show" by Ekow Eshun. For Collect 2020, Cynthia Corbett and Matt Smith co-curated a site-specific installation featuring textiles and black parian works. The curation was extremely well-received, and Matt was awarded the inaugural Brookfield Properties Crafts Council Collection Prize, which allowed the Crafts Council to purchase six artworks for the Council's collection. The V&A Museum's Design and Textiles department also acquired one of Matt's subversive embroideries. In June 2020 the Gallery’s long-standing partner Contemporary Art Society has acquired twelve ceramic and tapestry works by Matt Smith. This acquisition became a central focus for the displays at the Hove Museum. This exciting project was possible due to the Contemporary Art Society’s Rapid Response Fund in partnership with Frieze London, which is a new initiative supporting artists and museums during the Covid-19 pandemic. 2021 and 2022 saw Matt Smith’s textile and ceramic artworks join the collection of National Museums Northern Ireland.

Matt regularly exhibits his work at public collections including Coming Out, Walker Art Gallery 2017, A Place at the Table, Pallant House, 2014; Subversive Design, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, 2013; DIY A Revolution in Handicrafts, Society for Contemporary Craft, Pittsburg, 2010.

Matt Smith started his career at the V&A before developing exhibitions at the Science Museum and the British Film Institute. After retraining as a ceramicist, his work has often taken the form of hybrid artist/curator. His large-scale solo shows have addressed themes including the legacy of colonisation in Losing Venus (Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford) and Flux: Parian Unpacked (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), LGBT visibility in Queering the Museum (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 2010) and Other Stories (Leeds University Art Collection, 2012). Matt co-directed and curated Unravelling the National Trust which saw over thirty artists working with contemporary craft (including himself) commissioned to respond to the histories of the National Trust properties Nymans House, Uppark House and The Vyne. Matt holds a practice-based PhD from the University of Brighton. The PhD explored the use of craft techniques in contemporary art by artists exploring identities. He is Professor of Ceramics and Glass at Konstfack University of the Arts, Stockholm and Honorary Fellow at the University of Leicester’s School of Museum Studies. His work is held in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Walker Art Gallery, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Fitzwilliam Museum as well as numerous private international collections.

Matt Smith is internationally represented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery and is the inaugural winner of the Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize in 2014. His ongoing exhibition Matt Smith: Who Owns History is open at the Hove Museum of Creativity (Brighton & Hove Museums) until April 16th 2023.

Maria Diletta Rondoni (born 1984, Italy) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Perugia. Maria has partaken in a number of exhibitions including, Flora Danica, Apple House-Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center in Skaelskor, Denmark (2021); Matres, International Festival of Ceramics for Women, Ceramics Museum of Deruta, in Perugia (2019); and XI International Exhibition for Ceramic Artists, Third Prize Winner, Museo Muda in Albissola Marina, Savona (2018). Most recently she was the 2022 Guest Artist in Residence working for Herbarium Amoris at Guldagergaard International Ceramic Center, Skaelskor, Denmark.

For Rondoni, ceramic works come to life through an anaphoric process of composing different forms that absorbs her in a slow creative flow. She uses few tools, sometimes just the tip of her fingers with a pinch and coil technique. She favours natural clays and loves to create her own palette of pigmented clays, thinking of her work as three-dimensional painting.

She is most inspired by the metamorphosis and permutation of nature, its movements and stages, its strength and fragility, to give voice to its sensual power as the origin of life. Her aim is to create a sort of imaginary, fantastic and corporeal herbarium.

Maria Diletta Rondoni was recently one of the selected artists for the Young Masters Open Call Exhibition 2022/23.

Margo Selby (born 1977, Eastbourne) studied at Chelsea College of Art & Design and the Royal College of Art in London, with a term at Atelier National d’Art in Paris. She now teaches in various institutions, and has her own studio weaving workshops. In 2020, Margo was the recipient of the Craft Council’s Collect Open Award for her large scale textiles installation Vexillum at Somerset House, and, in 2021, the bi-annual Turner Medal for ‘Britain’s Greatest Colourist’. She also gave the Turner Lecture, reflecting on her practice. 2022 saw her showing at multiple applied arts and craft fairs including Collect, London Craft Week, and London Art Fair.

Selby is an artist and designer working with colour and geometric form in textiles. She makes handwoven artworks, and oversees the design work of the Margo Selby Studio for mill production and commercial textiles applications – her tenet being ‘Art Into Industry’ – an approach to making art that is akin to that of the ‘Old Masters’ and mistresses, with their expanded studios and public commissions.

Selby uses thread to create abstract geometric artworks that explore repetition and transition, symmetry and asymmetry, the dynamic and the stable. She is interested in the relationship between the body and the machine, hand and industry, craft and technology. The loom, and the disciplined nature of weaving as a practice, provides boundaries and constraints which can be tested. The orderly nature of the craft of weaving is reflected in the developing designs of the artworks. She is satisfied by rhythmic and uniform repetition – where each element of a composition is changed in a methodical progression.

Margo Selby was recently one of the selected artists for the Young Masters Open Call Exhibition 2022/23.

British Amy Hughes’s practice is both fuelled by and symbolic of the highly prestigious Porcelain wares produced at the Royal Sèvres Factory in the late 17th and 18th centuries. Hughes’ works reference and pay homage to the originals, but are created with a freer approach, giving them a new lease of life.

After Alhambra pieces take inspiration from the large lustre vases produced during the Nasrid Dynasty (the last Muslim Dynasty in the Iberian peninsula, ruling Granada) in the 14th and 15th centuries which became romantically known as 'Alhambra Vases', and of which only 8 remain in semi-intact existence today. The skill, the legend, the intrigue surrounding these vases captivated and fuelled my fascination to explore a contemporary response to the stunning relics. The forms, the two wing-like handles, the horizontal decorations all reference the originals, the rawness in composition and materiality nodding to their faded beauty. Drawing studies of their intricate surface pattern have been enlarged and explored on the coil and slab built forms creating exciting pattern and shape with a colourful and lively approach.

After Amphora pieces take inspiration from ancient Greek pottery, with a concern for form and decoration. The vases seek to 'talk' about the distinctive ancient storage jars and the intricate decoration that was painted upon them, now explored and enlarged on the coil and slab built forms, creating exciting patterns and shapes with a colourful, lively and painterly approach that gives them a new vibrant lease of life.

The After Alhambra and After Amphora pieces may take historical inspiration from ceramic artefacts of the Nasrid dynasty and Ancient Greece, but their modern day interpretation and reworking can be said to be directly influenced by contemporary culture(s), including fashion and print, explored through the bold use and application of colour, surface treatment and pattern across a form. They playfully explore the relationship between clay and textiles. The use of texture creates almost fabric like aesthetics on these ceramics, through layers of slip application creating depth akin to a knit or heavy weave, with more exposed or 'faded' areas gauze-like or requiring a darn. Areas of the transparent glaze application vs those unglazed, the smooth vs the rough, a silk vs heavy cotton, playing with light and movement. The wing-like handles and appendages are kindred to pattern cutting but with a rawness of a torn unfinished edge like a fray or a rip.

The Vase Studies are hand built porcelain vases that take inspiration from historic and contemporary Meissen production pieces. The vases seek to ‘talk’ about the elaborate hand painted floral wares produced at the historic German porcelain manufactory. Playful in their collage-like approach, the ambiguous decoration is extracted from enlarged illustrations made of the originals, then explored in raised relief on the vase surfaces. Rewarding curiosity, the pieces boast colourful and painterly interiors referencing the extravagant palettes used by the manufactory, with a refined gold lustre rim for renewed grandeur.

Amy Hughes works and exhibits internationally, including high profile Collect art fair with the Crafts Council with Cynthia Corbett Gallery and a spell as Artist in Residence at Konstfack School, Stockholm, Sweden. She was nominated to represent the UK in ‘New Talent’ at the European Ceramic Context 2014 as well as being shortlisted for the inaugural Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize 2014 for artists who show an exceptional command of ceramics, alongside an awareness of the heritage of ceramic craft.

In 2015, Hughes was chosen as the first Ceramics and Industry Artist in Residence at the Victoria & Albert Museum working in collaboration with 1882Ltd, as well as being selected as one of eleven artists for AWARD at the British Ceramics Biennial ‘presenting new works exemplifying the energy and vitality of the best of British contemporary ceramics practice.’
In 2018 her first solo show Garniture at Croome Court (part of the National Trust) was funded by Arts Council England – she had the opportunity of working with Croome Court's extensive collections. Most recently she was selected as one of 5 commissioned Artists to work with at The Leach Pottery St Ives on the Leach 100, which is part of centenary celebrations looking at the past, the present and the future of studio pottery. In 2021 she will be participating in For the Love of the Master: 25 artists fascinated by Piranesi – a group exhibition celebrating the legacy of this versatile Roman artist in the 21st century. This homage to Piranesi will be held in Dublin Castle & the Casino at Marino, Dublin.

Amy Hughes was a finalist for the Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize in 2014 and is internationally represented by the Cythia Corbett Gallery. She has recently been shortlisted for the Brookfield Properties Craft Award 2023.