Show at Leach Pottery: Colour & Movement

The Leach Pottery's exhibition 'Colour & Movement' opens in 9 February. Free Entry.

The group show celebrates contemporary and emerging potters who work with colour, flowing decoration and lively movement from Dylan Bowen, Heather Gibson, Dawn Hajittofi, Jennifer Hall and Tarragon Smith.

Dylan Bowen makes slip decorated earthenware using both traditional and contemporary materials and techniques. Dylan works on a small but ever mutating range of shapes, large platters, bowls and more sculptural forms. The clay can be thrown, cut, carved or hand built, then slips are poured, dipped or brushed on. Marks are made quickly using trailers while the layers of slip are still wet.

Dylan trained with Clive Bowen at Shebbear Pottery before studying at Camberwell School of Art. He has shared a studio in Oxfordshire with Jane Bowen for the past 20 years. Dylan is Fellow of the CPA and has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad.

Heather Gibson is a London-based ceramicist. She is currently undertaking an MA at the Royal College of Art and is a recipient of the Marit Rausing Scholarship in Ceramics and Glass (2024). Heather makes a range of hand-built ceramic stoneware, including large chargers, carved vessels and tableware.

Dawn Hajittofi studied Ceramics at Havering College and the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham. She set up her own practice in January 2020. She throws vessels in white earthenware, then alters and marks the surfaces with various indentations, sometimes adding pieces to the surface. She decorates using coloured slips, oxides, glazes and underglazes.

Jennifer Hall uses a geared kick wheel to throws domestic ware in small batches. She decorates her pots with slips and oxides, using a combination of slip trailing, brushwork and sgraffito techniques.

Tarragon Smith has a BFA from NSCAD university, Halifax, Canada, and an MFA from Central Saint Martins, London. His work carries an over-riding aesthetic, in both form and decoration, that he sums up simply as ‘artefact’.