About Weekend Artist Talks

Join us at the BCB festival weekends to meet, ask questions and hear from many of the talented artists exhibiting with us this year. The artist talks will bring energy to the BCB festival weekends and share more in-depth and behind the scenes stories about how it’s been creating work over the past several months, their careers as artists, their greatest inspirations and the artwork they have created especially for BCB 2021. The talks are available to attend in-person or via private live stream.

When

Saturday 2nd October 

14:30-15:00 – Christie Brown, AWARD 2021 Exhibitor.

15:15-15:45 – Helen Beard, AWARD 2021 Exhibitor.

16:00-16:30 – Mawuena Kattah, AWARD 2021 Exhibitor.

Artists Involved

Christie Brown  

Christie Brown is an artist based in London and Emerita Professor of Ceramics at the University of Westminster. Her figurative practice is informed by our relationship with objects and the significance and relevance of museum collections and archaic artefacts to contemporary art. Exploring the relationship between archaeology and psychoanalysis, her work references the mythology, narrative and symbolism associated with clay. She often presents her work through site or theme-specificity and her making method of press-moulding allows her to explore the nature of repetition though installation and series. Recent work has focussed on the division and isolation caused by current events while ongoing projects examine the connection between drawing and sculpture within a tableau scenario.

Christie Brown website link.

Helen Beard 

Helen Beard is a potter and illustrator and a people watcher at heart. She works from her London studio where she makes, draws, designs and sometimes teaches. The local area and people inspire much of her work. There are all sorts of characters who crop up again and again in her sketchbooks and on her pots – from swimmers in the parks to traders at the local markets. After her BA at Edinburgh College of Art, Helen began an eighteen-month apprenticeship with artist and writer Edmund de Waal. It was here, that she learnt to throw and was able to develop her drawing technique onto porcelain. She later introduced apprenticeships to her studio through the charitable trust Adopt a Potter.
Helen Beard website link.

Mawuena Kattah 

Mawuena Kattah’s ceramics embody a strong sense of pattern and narrative, drawing on influences including African wax print textiles, Iznik ceramic design and her extensive personal archive of family photographs taken in Ghana and London. Kattah’s practice brings people and pattern together in complex, vibrant compositions. Her immersive installations centre on her unique ceramic vessels, friezes and table services to create semi-domestic spaces within a gallery, museum or site-specific space. Kattah invites her audiences to share in her multi-layered experience of collectivity and kinship.  

Mawuena Kattah website link.

Where

This event is taking place in-person at BCB’s festival hub, The Goods Yards, and online via a private livestream.

Tickets

There are 10 tickets available to attend the talk in-person and 50 tickets for the private Livestream. Please ensure you choose the right ticket by clicking Book Now and checking the name of the ticket reads IN-PERSON or LIVESTREAM.

We’re introducing a sliding scale ticket system for ticketed events at British Ceramics Biennial 2021.

Supported By

The Weekend Artist Talks are proudly run as part of creative business support programme Factory. Factory is a partnership between Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce, Staffordshire University, British Ceramics Biennial and ACAVA. The programme is part funded by the European Regional Development Fund. Follow this link for more information about other opportunities and workshops run through Factory.