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JULIA ELLEN LANCASTER

Julia Ellen Lancaster is an artist working out of London and Kent, UK. Working with clay, glass, rock, ceramics and glaze her work draws on the specifics of a place or space, imagining future museums that tell stories from the perspective of natural matter. 


The geology of a place is embedded in the narratives and forms of her ceramic sculptures, shaping them in ways that are both intentional and subconscious, shaped by millennia of geological processes, holding the memory of its origins, whether from a riverbed, an eroded cliffside, or an industrial excavation site. 


In some ways, the process extends the notion of Automatism associated with the Surrealist tradition, turning it into a tactile and material-driven experience. As Lancaster collects, re-uses, and reshapes fragments of clay, she allows instinct to guide the process, letting unconscious associations emerge through form and texture. Automatism, for her, is not just about spontaneous mark-making but about channelling the past, realizing imagined histories and futures through the very materiality of clay.


Graduating from the Royal College of Art Lancaster spent time in Tokyo, researching and exhibiting at Youkobo Arts Centre, Tokyo. Lancaster was subsequently selected for the Leach 100 Residency, St Ives, UK in 2020 as part of the Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada pottery Centenary Celebrations. In 2021 she was awarded a further residency with Leach Pottery, being one of the first artists to take up residence at the historically significant Anchor studio, the original home of the Newlyn Art School in Cornwall, UK. More recently Lancaster was awarded the first international Residency at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Ceramics school, 2024, culminating in a sell-out show of new work.  Exhibiting across the UK, Japan and Australia, Lancaster teaches ceramics and sculpture in professional studios and institutions and is a selected member of the Royal Society of Sculptors, UK.

ARTWORKS

EXHIBITIONS

LIMINAL SALON III

15 November - 17 January 2026

LIMINAL SALON II: GROUP EXHIBITION

26 October - 23 November 2024

LIMINAL SALON: GROUP EXHIBITION

4 - 18 November 2023

CV

Selected Exhibitions:
2025
The Whole World In Our Hands - Group show - Stephen Lawrence Gallery, Greenwich, London, April 2025
Ground Works - Group show - County Hall Pottery, London, May 2025
If Heaven Falls - Group show - The Lido Store Gallery, Margate February 2025
Shadders - Group show - Project 78 Gallery, St Leonards-on-Sea, January 2025

2024
Mosaic Art - Group show - Corner7Camden & London School of Mosaic, November 2024
Liminal Salon II - Liminal Gallery, Margate, November 2024
Past, Present, Future - Bankside Gallery, London, October 2024
Falling Angel - Solo show, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia, June 2024
What Was Left, Thing Power - Three person show - Cliftonville Gallery, Margate, March 2024

2023
Liminal Salon - Liminal Gallery, November 2023
Deadly Bloom - Solo show - Liminal Gallery, Margate, October 2023
Small and Mighty Club - Ladies Drawing Club, Paris, June 2023
The Weight of Being - SVA John St Gallery, Stroud, May 2023
Rooted - Solo show, Poplar Union Arts Centre, London, April - May 2023

2022
Journey to the Centre of the Earth - Solo show, m2 Gallery & Pavillion, London, Oct - Nov 2022
Vessels of Meaning - Jupitor Gallery, Newlyn, Sept 2022
Turner Contemporary Open X CRP - Turner Contemporary, Margate, Jan - Feb 2022

2021
Resettling - Newlyn Art Gallery, December 2021.
Resettling - Solo show, Anchor Studio, Newlyn, 2021
Whilst We Weren’t Listening - Solo show, Urban Room, Folkestone, 2021

2020
Lost & Found - Solo show, Poplar Union Arts Centre, London, 2020 - 21
Work in Progress - Group show, Porthmeor Studios, St Ives, 2020

2019
Candid Arts - Group show, London, 2019

2018
Micro Museum - Solo show, Youkobo Arts Centre, Tokyo, 2018

Community Engagement
Glasshouse - Powell Cotton Museum, Birchington, 2022.
The Listening Project - Folkestone Fringe, Folkestone, 2021.
Trophy - Community Links, Canning Town, London, 2021.
Ceramics & Wellbeing - Pritchards Rd Day Centre, Bethnal Green, London, 2020.
1-2-1 Clayworks London Studio - Newham, London, 2018/19.

Residencies/Awards
Artist in Residence, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, RMIT University, Australia, 2024
Artist in Residence, Powell Cotton Museum, Birchington, 2024 - 2025
Leach 100 Residency Artist, Newlyn, Cornwall, 2021.
Leach 100 Residency Artist, St Ives, Cornwall, 2020.
Youkobo Art Centre Residency, Tokyo, 2018.
Youkobo Art Centre Residency, Tokyo, 2017.
Troy Town Art Pottery Residency - Open School East, 2014.

Commissions:
Powell Cotton Museum, Quex House, Birchington, Kent. 2022

Collections:
Fine Art Collection, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia.
Private collections in the UK, Japan and Australia.

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