News
Our WCCD residencies artists - Katalina Caliendo, RJ Fernandez, Joan Glasgow Ashton & Tanvi Kant, artist member Vanessa Farinha, and former artist member Sarah Gomes Harris, are all part of this group exhibition Taking Time at Flatland Projects.
The works presented will span across painting, sculpture, video, and physical experience, using these varied mechanisms of story-telling to present what Bexhill-on-sea has to offer as a place for art and artists. Ideas of local people and communities, their agency and relationships to the space around them, are the themes that bind these works together.
We will be hosting a public opening event on Saturday 22nd February from 14:30 - 17:00, all are welcome, our gallery is flat, plus we have accessible toilets.
This exhibition has been developed in partnership with Talent Accelerator (De La Warr Pavilion) and Common Clay, supported through essential funds from Arts Council England, and our vital core funding from Rother District Council.
Carla WrightThe Fuddling Gossips
15 February—13 April 2025
At VOLT, Devonshire Collective
The Fuddling Gossips by artist Carla Wright will be an exhibition of new works that engage with gossip as a form of connection, inspired by social spaces of youth and shared studios as sites of communal making, thinking and doing.
With a practice that centres the process of working with ceramics as material and research, the gallery will become host to a series of works that consider function, form and design as a means to invite participation and share knowledge.
Exhibition Opening: Saturday 15 February 2024, 2 - 4pm.
Free, all welcome.
Carla Wright is an artist living and working in East Sussex. She makes ceramic sculptures & wall-based works that explore community architecture & places of gathering in predominantly working class neighbourhoods, centred around public spaces - communal buildings and playgrounds.
Motifs and fragments of modernist climbing frames, concrete stepping stones & references to community centre murals appear throughout the work. Her practice is informed by growing up around this type of architecture and responding through ceramic ‘drawings’ and sculptural assemblages - interconnecting grouping of objects, supporting, interacting and playing with each other.
“Crooked evening of the rites of last snow for good luck for one and all”As part of Bexhill After Dark 2025, Common Clay presents an installation by Agata Bogacka - 25th January
Taking over the windows of CMC Barbers, Agata has created the installation “Crooked evening of the rites of last snow for good luck for one and all”
This installation is a personal reflection on an ancient Slavic tradition of celebrating the days getting longer, and chasing the winter hibernation away before arrival of the spring.
The Koleda/ Misie/Dziady rites are celebrated between winter solstice until the end of the carnival season at the beginning of February. Groups of people are getting dressed as ancient spirits. Angels, bears, chimney sweeps and horses are performing loud dances to bring good luck and chase the winter away.
Shop Window Stories organised by Flatland Projects
Bexhill After Dark organised by 18 Hours Events
Young People Workshops with New Horizons School (Sabden) 2024. Photos by Euan Baker
![]()
![]()
Young People Workshops with New Horizons School (Sabden) 2024. Photos by Euan Baker![]()
![]()
Cobalt by Katie Boccaccini Meadows
Next up at the Common Clay Project Space is ‘Cobalt’ - an exhibition of new ceramics by our very own artist member Katie Boccaccini Meadows. Please join us this Friday evening for the opening event with complimentary natural wine - Friday 19th July 5.30 - 8pm.
Cobalt by Katie Boccaccini MeadowsDrawing on the rich historical importance of ceramics to global culture and trade, Katie Boccaccini Meadows creates sculptural and functional objects which are both playful and expertly crafted. Thrown on the wheel then assembled, her forms are derived from influences across multiple ceramic traditions.
For this exhibition Meadows is interested in the historical importance of cobalt oxide in the decoration of ceramics and how its use has embodied iconic design styles across cultures, beginning in 14th century China through to the present day.
Exhibition continues 20th July - 31st August Wed-Fri or by appointment.
We will also be open on Saturday 6th August 2-6pm to coincide with an exhibition at Flatland Projects, where we will be running a drop-in clay workshop exploring some of Katie’s ceramic work, open to all ages.
![]()
Common Clay & Working Class Creative Database Residencies Announced!!
Common Clay & Working Class Creative Database Residencies Announced!!We are excited to announce our Common Clay/WCCD 2024 residency artists are Joan Glasgow Ashton, Katalina Caliendo, Tanvi Kant and RJ Fernandez. Each resident will have access to the studio for 6 months, with technical guidance and professional development. We look forward to welcoming our new resident artists to the studio next month!
Common Clay presents ‘Souvenirs from Silas'
As part of Beeching Road Open Studios event on
Saturday 4th May 2024 at 14.00 - 18.00
please join us for an exhibition and free drop-in clay workshop at Common Clay!
‘Souvenirs from Silas’ is an exhibition of recent ceramic works by Common Clay member Silas Money. Silas works instinctively with playful irreverence and aims to make work that is both immediate and sincere. To coincide with ‘Souvenirs from Silas’ there will be a free drop-in clay workshop during the opening. All ages are welcome.
The exhibition will be open throughout May 2024
Wednesday to Saturday 12-4
Click here for more info
L A M P S - Common Clay Members Show 2023
Common Members Show 2023: Eddie Knevett, Jasmine Lapper-Goodrum, Carla Wright, Silas Money, Nigel Woodford, Rhiannon Inman-Simpson, Liz Maynard, Mary Cornes, Thilaka Hillman, Pip Johnson, Lily Arnold, Agata Bogacka, Kate Boccaccini-Meadows, Daniela Exley, Rosalind Faram
Amy Fenton
In a Quarter Way
1 - 31 July 2023
Common Clay is pleased to present an exhibition of ceramic wall pieces and plates by Amy Fenton, made during fortnightly sessions at Common Clay studio.
Amy likes to follow a line, a mark, a shadow of her own hand, so together we developed a way for Amy to respond to her own marks through layering. Carved marks, followed by painted slips, fired, applied glazes, drawn marks with underglaze pencils, fired, and often glazed again.
“Amy has lifelong neurological conditions that over the years have caused almost complete memory loss and significant cognitive impairment. Working with Carla at Common Clay has enabled Amy’s creativity to emerge alongside being in an environment where her own particular language is appreciated.” Jill Fenton (Amy’s mum)
Amy is an artist at Project Art Works, recent exhibitions include Towner International 2022 at Towner Gallery, Eastbourne, a group show at Untitled Gallery, Hastings 2023, and Coastal Currents at Project Art Works studio, Hastings, 2022.
Common Clay Members Show 2022
19 November - 11 December
Flatlands Projects Foyer
Agata Bogacka / Carla Wright / Daniela Exley / Eddie Knevett / Georgie Scott Ian Macdonald / John Coello / Kate Boccaccini-Meadows / Lily Arnold / Mary Cornes / Mew / Miguel Martin / Philip Bray / Rosalind Faram / Sarah Gomes Harris / Silas Money / Thilaka Hillman
Common Clay presents an exhibition of ceramic candlesticks made by Common Clay artist members. With a variety of artist makers from professional ceramicists to hobbyists, this annual members show gives the opportunity for people to showcase their work, sometimes for the first time, in a supported environment and within a contemporary art context.
Gathering Container
Common Clay x Flatland Projects
18 – 30 January 2020
https://www.flatlandprojects.com/
A leaf a gourd a shell a net a bag a sling a sack a bottle a pot a box a container. A holder. A recipient.
Science fiction writer Ursula K Le Guin’s essay ‘The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction’ posits the idea that, before the spear, we had the pot. Before we made weapons to attack, we made tools to gather. It was in this act of gathering – seeds and oats and nuts and berries – and of gathering together that our human culture was formed. We gathered to tell and hear stories, to exchange knowledge – although the stories that have been immortalised are those of the big, strong, Ape Man hunter with his big stick energy. In fact, Le Guin writes, ‘Before the tool that forces energy outward, we made the tool that brings energy home.’ It is no coincidence that the name for these energy-holders is receptacle. To receive.
It is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it’s useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred.
Common Clay is a container for people. Like a velvet pouch of Scrabble tiles, the studio receives in people and lumps of clay like small nuggets of knowledge, provides a place for them to gather and build and mould with one another, and then offers this knowledge back into the world as a gift. In the first instance, skills are gifted, both through structured classes and more informal, spontaneous cooperation. Yet the results, the ceramic objects, are also gifted: most of the members eat and drink from things that others have made in the studio. These receptacles are often holders of further gifts – a cup of tea made for a friend, a bowl of soup for an ill family member, a pot to hold a plant giving oxygen. To give is to receive.
In a 2019 interview, the feminist theorist Donna Haraway says that reality is ‘a matter of testing the holdingness of things. Do things hold or not?’ Our reality as humans, as kin, has always been to make objects that hold our stories, and to find others to receive them.
Gathering Container is an exhibition of work by Common Clay studio members, invited to Flatland Projects for Flatland’s first anniversary show. The exhibition is supported by Arts Council England.
17th - 20th October 2019
Common Ware at PEER, London
BECKY BEASLEY | BENJAMIN PHILLIPS | CARLA WRIGHT | FAYE MOORHOUSE | JACK STRANGE | JENI JOHNSON | MAYA SHAPIRO-STEEN | NOCH | SILAS MONEY | ROWAN CORKILL
As part of Art Licks Weekend 2019, Common Clay – a Hastings-based ceramics studio – present Common Ware, an exhibition at PEER showcasing ceramic multiples made by members and associates of the studio alongside an immersive sound piece and daily artist led workshops.
Nine artists have made a ceramic work in multiples of fifteen, designed for everyday use. To unify this collection of works, and to reflect the creative community central to their collective philosophy, each artist has considered the importance of self-care in the everyday and the therapeutic quality of working with clay. This thinking process is the means by which the handmade ceramic objects have been created. Ambient electronic sound work by noch emanating from a ceramic vessel further creates a reflective space for visitors to view the works and engage with the material.
Each day of the exhibition there were free drop-in workshops led by a participating artist for members of the public to join in with. Each workshop revolved around creating things with clay and encouraged participants to explore mindfulness, sensations and personal hopes.
The multiple artworks, which at the end of the exhibition was packed into wooden boxes, were exchanged between the artists as a gesture of communal making and sharing, an extension of Common Clay’s ethos. The remaining six boxes are available for sale to help fund future projects by the ceramics studio.
https://www.peeruk.org/past-events/2019/10/18/common-clay-common-ware-at-peer
