Lydia Hardwick

Lydia Hardwick graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2013. Primarily working with clay, her practice spans across the fields of art and design. From tableware to pots, Hardwick’s work appeals to the viewer’s visceral senses. Using surface techniques such as inlaying and slip decorating, her working methods are meditative and intuitive, developed through an understanding of materials gained over years of working with clay.

Hardwick is drawn to patterns and motifs found within indigenous craft objects and textiles, made by communities that attribute great expressive power to visual things. Intrigued by the mysterious formal vocabulary of folk geometry, she combines a myriad of making traditions with influences from European art and design to produce work that aims to reconnect us to an ancient appreciation of line, surface, tone and texture as presences unto themselves.

For Alveston Fine Arts, Hardwick has created a series of densely patterned pots. For many of the works, she has experimented on a larger scale by expanding both existing and new motifs to wrap around forms. The black and white terracotta pieces combine painting with slips, sgraffito and resist work, with a strong focus on layering. Lydia has also introduced a number of glazed stoneware pieces, for which she has produced a range of oxide-stained slips, which have either been inlaid or applied to the surface of the pots.

Lydia collaborated and exhibited with architect collective Assemble on their 2015 Turner Prize-winning project, Granby Workshops. In 2016, the Victoria and Albert Museum purchased one of her designs for its permanent collection. As an artist-educator, she has undertaken educational projects with the Royal Academy of Arts, Whitechapel Gallery, Camden Arts Centre and Turner Contemporary.