Leach Pottery’s 2024 exhibition programme kicks off next month, and the group show Colour & Movement gets the season under way on 9th February.

Leach Pottery Dylan Bowen

The exhibition celebrates contemporary and emerging potters who work with colour, flowing decoration, and lively movement. Expect pots with a sense of freedom and energy.

The show features Dylan Bowen, Heather Gibson, Dawn Hajittofi, Jennifer Hall and Tarragon Smith. Pots will be available to purchase from 9th February, and the exhibition runs until 19th May.

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.

Heather Gibson makes a range of hand-built ceramic stoneware, including large chargers, carved vessels, and tableware. Exploring clay as a canvas for trace, memory, and mark-making, she uses a careful alchemy of slips, oxides, and glazes to create bold, sculptural, and dynamic pieces.

Dawn Hajittofi 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 works from her home studio overlooking the sea on the north coast of Pembrokeshire. Using a geared kickwheel, she 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 is a Canadian-born ceramicist, currently residing in Norfolk. His work carries an over-riding aesthetic, in both form and decoration, that he sums up simply as ‘artefact’. “An artefact is an object that speaks of individuality, a timeline, a story; something that builds relationships,” he says. “The wave motif that can be found in varying guises on much of my work, a catchall for distance, loss, and migration, which carries both political and personal significance.”

Read more about the exhibition on the Leach Gallery website.