Edgelands Panel Talk: Nancy Campbell, Emma Edmondson & Sarah Christie

The Panel Talk will take place in our gallery at:  County Hall Pottery, Belvedere Road, Waterloo, SE1 7PB.

To accompany ‘Edgelands’, we invite you to an afternoon of discussion, richly exploring and extending the themes of the exhibition. We are joined by acclaimed writer Nancy Campbell, and artist Emma Edmondson, and facilitated by artist, writer and educator Sarah Christie.

1pm–2pm Emma Edmondson will discuss her public work ‘Made from this Land’ in Southend-on-Sea. After discovering a covenant in the deeds of many local houses, stating residents are not allowed to make bricks of tiles from the clay underneath their feet, Emma dug up local clay and made over 500 hand-made bricks with the community to create a sculptural walk formed of the clay-rich land it sits on. Nominated for the PSSA Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Sculpture, ‘Made from this Land’ is a response to the rich brickfield history of the area, connecting closely with local people. We will hear how and why she embarked on the project, the many hoops she had to jump through to make it happen, and the collaborative approach that led to its realization.

2pm–2.30pm Break

2.30pm–3.30pm Nancy Campbell will share her experiences of life in a caravan on a strip of neglected woodland between canal and railway, a true edgeland. Her recent memoir Thunderstone is a compelling account of finding her way through precarity and upheaval, and discovering how to flourish. As she clears the ground of nettles and industrial waste to make her own dwelling place, Nancy rebuilds her life on the edgeland while never losing sight of the wider world. She forges friendships with neighbours moored off-grid and finds and finds moments of freedom amid the threat of collapse. We will discuss the objects, places, and moments of wild beauty that guide the way.

NANCY CAMPBELL’s latest book, Thunderstone, is a memoir of post-lockdown housing precarity on the margins of Oxford, which received the TLS Ackerley Prize 2023. Nancy served for two-years as the UK’s Canal Laureate writing poems for installation along the waterways; these texts could be seen projected on wharves at night, stencilled on towpaths, or engraved into fish gates. Nancy received the Royal Geographical Society Ness Award for environmental writing for a decade-long response to the culture and climate of the polar regions across several works of non-fiction, poetry and artist’s books. Her words have been commissioned by the Royal Academy, the BBC and the British Library, and she has been fortunate to collaborate with extraordinary artists and musicians. She has held numerous international research residencies, most recently as Visiting Professor of Literature at the Free University of Berlin.

SARAH CHRISTIE is a London-based artist, writer and educator. Her embodied practice uses clay as a primary, material for sensing, thinking, moving and making with. She invites correspondence and collaboration with other people, places, forms and materials, to create work that may be impermanent, interdisciplinary, slow-growing and cyclical. This ‘call-and-response’ approach welcomes uncertainty and creates space for unexpected outcomes to emerge. Sarah has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in the UK and internationally, including at London’s Southwark Cathedral, OVADA in Oxford, British Ceramics Biennial, and Industry City, Brooklyn, New York. Her writing has been published in the Journal of Australian Ceramics, online zine ‘What About Clay?’ and in exhibition catalogues. She teaches at Central Saint Martins, UAL, and is a visiting artist at Imperial College London and King’s College.  

EMMA EDMONDSON (b. 1984) lives and works in Southend on Sea.  Studying and graduating during the 2008 financial crash alternative economies and utopian community are at the centre of her practice. Through sculpture, print, sound and text, she explores the power of people coming together through creative projects to change systems and rules. Recently she has been processing raw clay dug from the ground and exploring local land rights to create sculptures that sit on the ground they were made from. Through this she wants to start conversations about agency, land ownership and our connections as humans to the land we live on. She has shown her work in spaces around the UK including Victoria & Albert Museum and Barbican, most recently with a solo show at Arcade/Campfa in Cardiff. She has been awarded commissions from Focal Point Gallery, AHRC and Artquest. She teaches art in community spaces, schools, college, arts organisations and universities to support her practice, often on precarious contracts. In 2016 Edmondson founded TOMA (The Other MA), a postgraduate level art programme outside of the traditional institutional model. Designed to fit the everyday lives of 21st century artists, the programme is shaped by its participants, and was created in response to the hierarchies surrounding access to higher education. Emma sees TOMA and her teaching work as part of her creative practice.  Emma also runs Dog Ear with Lu Williams, producing dog toy sculptures and texts for humans and hounds.