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JULIA ELLEN LANCASTER

Julia Ellen Lancaster works with clay, minerals and rocks, some spanning millions of years of the rock cycle, excavated from different geological sites. The sculptures she makes include salvaged detritus and fragments, rejected from previous incarnations, reused and reassembled. The materials chosen offer a connection to the past, marking and capturing a sense of embedded time. Many of her works are fired to extreme heat, often repeatedly, to create forms that investigate the relationship between humans and the landscape, seen as connected and interchangeable. Some works are however left unfired, risking their eventual swifter demise. In doing so, these works only exist as a digital footprint - their beauty residing in their temporary status, their instability and their transience, so challenging us to find beauty in the different, the unrecognisable and the impermanent.


The works often mimic primitive or other-worldly organisms that embrace the beauty of difference, imagining an intelligent future built from the remains of the past and our present.  ​


Julia Ellen Lancaster graduated from MA Environmental Media at the Royal College of Art. Following a short time spent in Tokyo she was selected to undertake a residency in St Ives, UK in 2020 as part of the Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada pottery centenary celebrations, responding to the theme of the Leach as a place of experimentation, in partnership with Porthmeor Studios. In 2021 she was awarded a further residency with Leach Pottery, being one of the first artists to take up a residency at the historically significant Anchor studio, the original home the Newlyn Art School. Prior to this she was responsible for setting up one of the first work/live artists residency schemes in London as well as managing two galleries before returning to her own practice.


She currently teaches in a professional ceramics studio on the South East coast, UK, as well as teaching drawing at the Art Academy London. Since 2022 Lancaster continues to run a series of seminars ‘Clay in Conversation’ in partnership with the Ceramic Research Centre, University of Westminster.

ARTWORKS

EXHIBITIONS

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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