Use And Ornament

Venue details
AirSpace Gallery, 4 Broad Street, City Centre
Stoke-on-Trent
Staffordshire
ST1 4HL
Find out more
  • Visiting information
  • Wednesday-Sunday 11am-5pm
    Closed Monday and Tuesday
Additional information

Closed Mondays and Tuesdays throughout the festival.

About Use And Ornament

Use And Ornament is a multi-media group exhibition exploring contemporary understandings of clay, as material and resource, and the role and purposes it might have today. It delves into what ceramics can offer us as we move into a time of recovery and rebuilding.
 
Use and Ornament creates a space for respite and refuge from a time of difficulty. It sets out practical uses for this earthy material and how it might help us to recover when the time comes. It suggests that the role of art, and thus the occupation of the artist and maker, is to create moments that move us to that important place of imagination, exploration and departure.
 
In an exhibition of two halves, the works shown discuss the need to make more sustainable choices in how we make and consume. It acknowledges a need to shift our value systems concerning global resources. Use and Ornament recognises that there is good reason to celebrate the sublime. For as much as we need art to have a role and a purpose, sometimes that role and purpose can be to lift us out of the hole we are in, even if for a moment, to dream of the future.
 
The exhibition comprises works by 6 artists/collectives, including work made during a public-facing and participatory artist residency, completed in August 2021.

 

Exhibiting Artists

Brickfield
Brickfield website link.

Clay College
Clay College website link.

Anna Collette Hunt 
Anna Collette Hunt website link.

InsideOutsideHouse

Claire Loder 
Claire Loder website link.

Katie Spragg
Katie Spragg website link.

 

Accessibility

AirSpace is situated in Hanley, in the heart of the City’s Cultural Quarter. Find it on the corner of Broad Street and Marsh Street South, opposite the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery. Stoke-on-Trent train station is a 20-minute walk from Hanley and regular buses run to Hanley from the station. Bus stops and a taxi rank are outside the main entrance, accessed when leaving platform 1.
 
The gallery has a metal ramp for access to the building but unfortunately does not have a lift for accessing the first floor studios. Please email mail@airspacegallery.org in advance if you need further help accessing the gallery, or to find other ways to see our work.

 

Supported By

This exhibition is supported by Arts Council England, AirSpace Gallery and Stoke-on-Trent City Council.

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