After Ash
Tuesday 8 July – Sunday 3 August 2025
County Hall Pottery is pleased to present After Ash, an exhibition exploring the transformative potential of wood firing, ash glazes, and alternative firing techniques in contemporary ceramics. Bringing together the work of nine artists, the exhibition engages with elemental processes in which fire, ash, and time converge to leave their often unpredictable, mark on clay.
Artists include: Fred Gwatkin, Ho Lai, Ian McDonald, Jim Gladwin, Juliet Ferguson-Rose, Jynsym Ong, Kazuya Ishida, Peter Nencini and Toni De Jesus
Through the intense alchemy of wood firing, surfaces are textured by flame, enriched by melted ash, and imbued with organic variations that cannot be replicated. The exhibition highlights the delicate balance between control and chance.
Ho Lai’s sculptural forms challenge the boundaries between glaze, clay, and glass, offering a poetic exploration of transformation and impermanence through experimental firing techniques.
Fred Gwatkin’s digitally coiled forms harness 3D printing to evoke natural growth and geological transformation, inviting a dialogue between emerging technologies and ancient firing methods.
Jim Gladwin’s quietly composed sculptures emerge from a deep, intuitive engagement with clay and fire, drawing on decades of material knowledge to celebrate the elemental and the overlooked.
Juliet Ferguson-Rose’s layered clay compositions evoke imagined relics and archaeological topographies, blurring the boundaries between artefact, architecture, and fiction.
Jynsym Ong’s vessels, rooted in domestic ritual and narrative symbolism, use wood-fired surfaces and house motifs to honour the quiet beauty of everyday life and the sanctity of the ordinary.
After Ash invites audiences to witness the tension between intention and accident, permanence and change, offering a powerful meditation on transformation and the beauty of fire’s unpredictable touch. By embracing these ancient yet continually evolving techniques, the exhibition reveals how material, process, and nature shape not only the work itself but also the creative spirit behind it.
Artists
Fred Gwatkin
Fred Gwatkin is a British ceramic artist who has been working with clay for the past 20 years. He is the lead ceramics practice tutor for the Fine Art department at Goldsmiths, where he has worked since 2016. After Goldsmiths’ acquisition of a 3D clay printer in 2017, his practice pivoted to digital approaches to working with clay and he has participated in a number of group shows and panel discussions at events such as Ceramic Art London, London Design Festival and London Craft Week, among others.
Ho lai
Ho Lai is a ceramic artist from Hong Kong, based in London. Her work explores the contemporary nature of ceramics, experimenting with the materials and processes involved in its creation by discovering new alternative methods in the making. In 2019 Lai graduated from the Royal College of Art, attained an MA in Ceramics & Glass and was awarded The Grocer’s Hall Scholarship. In 2024, Lai was awarded the Hong Kong Arts Development Council Cultural Exchange Grant to attend an artist-in-residence programme at the Shigaraki Ceramics Cultural Park in Japan.
ian mcdonald
Ian McDonald is an artist living and working in the United States. He has shown throughout the U.S, Europe and Japan, including The Cranbrook Art Museum, Play Mountain and the Curators Cube in Tokyo, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco, The New Wight Gallery at UCLA in Los Angeles and Patrick Parrish Gallery in New York City.
jim gladwin
Jim Gladwin is a London-based ceramic artist and educator. He previously led the Ceramics Department at City Lit and has taught on nationally recognised degree and postgraduate ceramics programs at Camberwell School of Art, Goldsmiths College, and Loughborough University.
Juliet Ferguson Rose
Juliet Ferguson-Rose is a London-based artist and sculptor. She graduated from the Royal College of Art (2023). Ferguson-Rose has undertaken residencies with Collective Matter, London and Joya, Spain. She is a recipient of Arts Council England Grants (2017 & 2018), the Sir Alistair and Lady Pilkington Award (2022) and the Charlotte Fraser Prize (2023).
Jynsym Ong
Jynsym Ong is a studio potter currently based in Oxford. Trained at Clay College, Stoke, she was subsequently awarded a Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation Scholarship to go to Japan and there undertook an apprenticeship at Mitoh Gama in Karatsu, Saga-ken.
Kazuya Ishida
Kazuya Ishida, a Bizen potter, creates contemporary forms inspired by nature. Trained under national treasure, Jun Isezaki, and in the UK, he uses traditional wood-fired kilns and natural materials. His distinctive spiralling marks reflect his interest in rhythm and pattern, echoing primordial textures and geological formations. He has taught kiln building and firing at the University of Oxford.
Peter Nencini
Peter Nencini is a maker and educator based in Norfolk. He works collaboratively on projects that respond to sites; previously with the Broads Authority, Archive for Rural Contemporary Architecture, Eastside Projects Birmingham and Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig. He teaches at the Royal College of Art.
Toni De Jesus
Toni De Jesus’s work and ethos is centred around the idea of ceramics and its strong association with craft – as a material and its context within the fine art spectrum. He is interested in the history and connotations of porcelain and terracotta.