WHY SO MUTE? 

Lanthanides: Rare Earth Spectra is Charly Blackburn’s debut solo exhibition, a presentation of works developed during her year-long residency at County Hall Pottery. 

 Incorporating Lanthanide oxides into ceramic sculptures, Blackburn creates undulations, bulbs, orbitals, and clay mulches, exploring the optical radiance generated from ceramic glazes.  

 Born from supernova explosions, pulled from the ground and purified at processing plants, Lanthanides are found in lenses, computer screens, lighting, fibre optics, corrective eye-surgery lasers, and MRI scanners. They illuminate streets, sharpen our glasses and peer into our bodies. This exhibition materialises these overlooked elements, revealing the otherwise silent conductors of our tech-laden lifestyles. Erbium pink. Praseodymium green. They are named as ‘critical’ and ’strategic’ but collectively, we barely know their elemental names.  

Holmium orange. Neodymium purple. Expect colour-shifting pastel domes, crystalline blooms, and pools of luminous glaze. Blackburn’s work reminds us that looking is an active encounter between light and matter — between wave and particle, perception and material. Titles such as Doping Lens and Accelerator Agent provide reference to the scientific and industrial vocabularies to which these elements belong.  

If the rare earth metals have made the technology that we crave possible: screens, lighters, missiles – everything from escapism to obliteration reduced to a manufacturable resource that allows us to accelerate, dominate, and erase… then crucially what Blackburn does is to ask us to look again, it brings to light what we pass over and makes it impossible to ignore so much of what we take for granted.   

Save the date:
7 – 27 September

Open Thu – Sun 13.00-18.00 (outside of these hours view by appointment via gallery@countyhallpottery.com) 

PV
7 September, 6–9 pm