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Kay Aplin is an architectural ceramist, creating site-specific commissions for the public realm and large-scale tiled installations for exhibitions. Her work responds to place and her process often involves using a microscope to magnify hidden forms in nature. Exhibitions include Kogei Triennial Kanazawa, Japan, European Ceramic Context, Denmark, British Ceramics Biennial and Collect, Saatchi Gallery, London.
Produced by artist-curators Kay Aplin & Joseph Young of The Ceramic House, Edges is a ceramics & sound art collaborative project involving artists from three nations at the western and eastern edges of Europe.Edges will develop ideas of exchange, what it means to work at the edge of something, to be on the fringes. ‘Edges’ also expands on positive concepts of materiality, understanding artistic practice as a so-called ‘cutting edge’, where boundaries are pushed back, and frontiers explored.
As an artist couple / collaborative partnership, Kay and Joseph are keen to explore the legacy of GF and Mary Watts as well as the ceramic tradition of Compton Pottery through a number of different artistic strategies. Their base at The Ceramic House also provides an analogy to Limnerslease with their pop-up gallery, events and performances programme and artistic residency programme set within a unique artist’s home.
In 2011, Kay founded The Ceramic House, an award-winning artist-led project space, residency and gallery. Since 2016, Kay has been collaborating with Joseph to form a unique curatorial team investigating the intersections between ceramic and sound art practice. They work in partnership with galleries, museums, festivals and heritage sites to produce ambitious multi-faceted projects incorporating exhibitions, residencies, films, publications and performances which extend their reach beyond The Ceramic House and out towards a wider international artistic community, including Made in Korea (2017) and Interbeing (2020-21) with China and Hong Kong. Their residency at Watts is part of their latest project Edges investigating collaborative practice in Ireland, Estonia and the UK.
The autumn residency of Kay Aplin and Joseph Young at Watts Gallery will produce:
The residency at Watts follows on from a summer residency at Interface, Connemara, Ireland. The artists spent four weeks walking the landscape collecting flora, fossil samples and sounds. This material will form the basis for their collaborative work during the residency period at Watts and will result in a ceramic and sound piece for the exhibition in 2024.
In February 2024, Aplin and Young, working with Irish curator Richard Carr, will mount an exhibition at Wexford Arts Centre bringing together the various strands of the Edges project. This exhibition will transfer to Watts Gallery in autumn 2024.
Their partners for the Edges project include Wexford Arts Centre, Interface, Framework Radio, Limerick School of Art and Design and Atlantic Technological University, Galway.