Urban Traces: Ceramics and The City

16 July – 6 November

This exhibition explores the significance of the city in studio ceramics. Usually thought of as a rural craft, studio ceramics often celebrates nature. Yet the majority of us spend our lives amongst the forms and angles of buildings, in a mechanised world surrounded by the textures of brick and concrete, and the traces of human activity. The exhibition shows how ceramicists have responded to, and re-imagined the city. They explore architecture and urban fabric, urban decay and industrial archaeology, maps and texts, individual and communal histories and the meaning of home. Opportunities to handle ceramics are included.

Co-curated by Brigitte Soltau the exhibition includes work by major contemporary ceramicists, including David Binns, Neil Brownsword, Stephen Dixon and John Higgins alongside works from Gallery Oldham’s collection by, among others, Halima Cassell and Gordon Baldwin.