EXHIBITIONS & EVENTS

Material Matters features the work of four artists – Ilona Sulikova, Jenny Morten, Katie Braida (ceramics) and Chris Tansey (painting). The four artists show their work nationally and they have come together in Scarborough to show work that is rich in form, surface and colour.. The OPO is really pleased to stage this exhibition – our first including ceramics and painting since the opening of our galleries in 2021..

 

Katie Braida makes sculptural earthenware vessels and forms.

They are hand built using a combination of coils and slabs. After bisque firing the pieces are then coloured with oxides and underglaze colours, before being fired again. Katie takes inspiration from the environment and the natural and man made marks and patterns within it.

 

Christopher Tansey is an East Yorkshire based painter who studied Fine Art at Liverpool John Moores University.

Tansey’s paintings explore and deal with existence, experience, memory and sentiency.

His paintings are also an exploration of the materials used and their intrinsic nature, qualities and properties.

Recent exhibitions include Messums Harrogate, Pineapple Black Middlesbrough, Hastings Contemporary, Fronteer Gallery Sheffield, Air Gallery Manchester, Ferens Art Gallery and Humber Street Gallery Hull, Elysium Gallery Swansea and Three Works Scarborough. Christopher was also long listed for the Contemporary British Painting prize 2021.

 

I make individual pieces, mostly vessels and hollow forms because I am interested in the contrast between the inner and outer surfaces and the interplay of light and shade on knife like edges between the two.

Drawing, texture and colour provide rhythm and movement challenging the viewer to move around the form following its changing appearance.

The surfaces and edges are refined and smoothed, taking their cue from natural forms – crab claws, shells and bones, with markings reminiscent of sand etched by the rippling of water and wind erosion, conveying the passage of time.

I work solely in a white porcelain body which acts as a canvas for the subtle colours of the slip painted exteriors and light reflecting glazed interiors of the vessels.

The larger pieces are hand built by coiling, then painted with coloured slips, wax and oxides.

 

Ilona’s spherical vessels are hand-build,decorated with copper and underglaze colours. The geometric patterns aim to communicate rhythm and movement as well as lightness of form.

In order to achieve fusion between the pattern and the spherical form all pieces are raku fired and fumed in sawdust.

This process creates light grey to black background and a contrasting coloured pattern.

 

All welcome