VOLT is excited to present a collaboration with Eastbourne Studio Pottery that celebrates the idiosyncratic nature of the studio potter. Referencing notions of mark-making, craft and authorship, this installation sees the gallery transformed into a working studio space, featuring an eclectic selection of tools and resources gathered over a lifetime of making.

Eastbourne Studio Pottery was established in 2017 as a creative environment for shared learning, welcoming students, artists and members of the community to explore working with clay. Clay is a material is incredibly malleable – it is responsive to the maker’s hand is almost unique in its ability to be transformed into an infinite range of designs. ESP borrowed the term ‘studio pottery’ to acknowledge its relationship with a long line of artist potters going back to the workshop created by Bernard Leach and Shōji Hamada in St. Ives in 1920.

Marking pottery to define its provenance has always been an important distinguishing feature of studio pottery. Marks have been impressed or printed onto mass produced ceramics from as early as the 16^th Century. Eastbourne Studio Pottery positively encourages mark making in all its forms; the work in this exhibition is left as an open invitation for collaboration. Interfere, experiment and surreptitiously make a mark of your own.