SLIP

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PV June 13th 2026, 4-6pm

Exhibition continues until July 4th 2026, open Saturdays 12-4pm and by appointment

 

Oceans Apart, Salford, M3 7DG

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Hannah Brown, Roberta Cialfi, Charlie Duck, Rebecca Elves, Marielle Heir, 

Linda Hemmersbach, Bethan Lloyd Worthington, Ruth Murray, Matthew Richardson,

Lottie Stoddart.

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SLIP brings together ten artists whose practices are concerned with the boundaries and possibilities of paint, extending beyond the flat surface and into clay. Clay is Just Thick Paint, a phrase often attributed to Peter Voulkos, proposes ceramic surfaces as sites for painterly experimentation. In this understanding, painting and sculpture converge: wet clay, slips, and glazes are handled like impasto, built up, scraped/wiped back, and reworked to create textured, expressive, and vividly coloured forms.

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Voulkos famously collapsed the divide between ceramic craft and fine art. Rejecting the smooth, well-thrown vessel, he embraced rupture and gesture — tearing, puncturing, and gouging raw clay with the physical immediacy of Abstract Expressionist painting. Clay became less a medium for utility than a field for action.

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The artists in this exhibition similarly turn to clay as a way back to object-making. Working directly and intuitively, they respond to the resistance and pliability of three-dimensional form. For painters accustomed to the rectangle of the canvas, clay offers a new kind of surface: one that folds, bulges and occupies space. It invites spontaneity and touch, bringing the body into closer dialogue with material.

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Here, clay can function like the pages of a sketchbook: a site for studies, tests, and improvisations that inform and expand a painting practice, yet these works are not simply preparatory. When paint and colour are applied to clay, it carries a distinct sense of movement and progression, animated by the curvature and mass beneath it. Glazes behave more unpredictably than paint, requiring the artist to stay open-minded to unexpected outcomes. Small, hand-sculpted forms bear the striations of their making, akin to painted brushstrokes translated into relief.

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In these works, colour and form are inseparable. The pliable shapes and invented volumes become extensions of the painted mark itself — three-dimensional gestures that hold the energy of the hand. Together, they propose a porous boundary between disciplines, where painting does not end at the edge of the canvas but continues, materially and spatially, into the round.

 

Image: Bethan Lloyd Worthington, Nocturne, 2021, Stoneware with slip,  dendritic mochaware technique, parian, onglaze painting, h12cm x w13cm x d7cm

 

Image credit: Kristian Day Gallery