Claire Ireland MSDC

Ceramics

About Claire
Claire produces elegant hand-built sculptural forms on different scales – collectable objects, inspired by her studio’s location in the grounds of a historical steam museum in London. Her working practice as a ceramic sculptor is changing and is drawn to a more minimal and reductive strategy, simplifying structures, but constantly enhancing and developing the surface.
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Biography Back to top

Claire finds great enjoyment and creative impulse in making collections and arranging man-made and natural forms. The discipline of drawing, her continuous sketchbook studies and her passion for printmaking are of prime importance to her.

As an experienced tutor, she teaches contemporary ways of making and experimental surface decoration, creating specialist short courses on smoke firing and experimental paperclay techniques.

Resumé Back to top

Claire studied ceramics and printmaking at Camberwell School of the Arts, London and is a dedicated hand builder. She revels in how ideas develop out of the process of making and experimenting with materials and techniques.

Claire makes sculptural pieces to commission for specific locations and has completed an artist in residence at the Pimlico Academy, a newly built secondary school in central London, developing a ceramic and steel installation for their roof garden.

She also designed a commemorative Portland stone panel of Pocahontas, which has been installed on the boundary wall of the Syon Park Estate, one of the last great houses of London.

She is a professional member of the Craft Potters Association and Design Nation, a membership organisation for Craft, Design and Product. Her latest project is a book commissioned by The Crowood Press on 'Surface Decoration for Ceramics' published in January 2023.

Recent contributions to galleries

  • Tregony Gallery, London and Cornwall
  • Contemporary Ceramics Centre, Bloomsbury
  • New Ashgate Gallery, Farnham
  • The Craft Centre and Design Gallery, Leeds
  • Cambridge Contemporary Crafts, Cambridge
  • Craftco Gallery, Suffolk
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