Yesterday, Steph and I had the pleasure of being invited along to Ruthin Craft Centre for the opening of the Susan Halls “Biting Back” exhibition.
We’ve both known Susan for getting on 20 years now. Steph as a Curator and me as a photographer.
We are also lucky enough to own a couple of her canine ceramics poodles.
These are just some mobile phone pics, but you’ll get the idea. All three gallery spaces are filled with amazing ceramic animals, masks, platters, sketchbooks, and paintings. Her work is amazing.
I really appreciate the sketchbooks and working drawings alongside the finished pieces, in the same away I appreciate a photographers notebook and printed contact sheets.
Text from Ruthin Craft Centre website…
Biting Back 23 March – 30 June 2024
Susan Halls is one of the UK’s leading figurative ceramicists. She has been making her distinctive animal sculptures for forty years, firstly from the UK in the early nineties and then from America where she was based for twenty years. Her work is held in the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Centre of Ceramic Art, York, and the Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, Shigaraki, Japan. She has also featured in numerous books and publications.
Her current work, predominantly feline, draws upon her muse Mussels the cat as well as the pigs and fowl she observes in the fields and farmyards around her studio in Poldhu, Cornwall. Though an accomplished maker, Halls is not driven by technique. She uses the full spectrum of ceramic processes as she needs, effortlessly switching from hand building to wheel throwing, majolica painting to scraffito, raku to stoneware firing, to bring her drawings to life in clay. Her unsentimental animal forms captivate in full living, breathing, majesty, appearingready to spring into purring or squawking life.
Biting Back is Halls’ first solo show in the UK for over thirty years. As befits her exceptional talents, she is one of only a handful of artists afforded the honour of occupying all three of Ruthin Craft Centre’s gallery spaces.
Curated by Sharon Blakey and Alex McErlain.