As always, we try to ensure that Bevere Gallery maintains its commitment to showing high quality and stimulating makers. This month we have once again the pleasure of showing a maker who has been a regular here over the years and another who is new to us although an experienced craftswoman and artist.

Amanda Popham – we have had the privilege of showing Amanda’s work for several years. Instantly recognisable, her vessels are the product of a lifetime’s devotion to drawing as a means of expressing an idea or emotion and to the tradition of ceramics itself. From the earliest years of her art career, she has had an ever-widening circle of collectors for her idiosyncratic and fantastic pieces.

Amanda studied at the Royal College of Art and had contact with many inspirational artists, driving her to push the boundaries of her creativity and imagination and developing her highly original style. Her reputation was established when her work was selected by Liberty’s who she supplied for 20 years. Her unique, imaginative, hand-built earthenware figures and installations exude a natural spontaneity and are beautifully executed to the highest standard.

From our perspective, this is best described as ceramic art. Her finely drawn and decorative pieces benefit through looking from different perspectives. As with all excellent art, one never tires of these extraordinary pieces,

Cat Santos is appearing at Bevere for the first time. She has been a print maker since leaving Saint Martins in 1981 and had her own T shirt printing business for 30 years. She has always enjoyed silk screen, mono printing, lino and etching processes. About ten years ago, she took up ceramics and found how sympathetic the surface of clay is to taking print. She explored various techniques using slips, oxides and underglaze the variety of clay surfaces used, from smooth, white porcelain, to deliciously dark, black clay or heavy, textured, grogged clay.

In her T shirt printing, it was important that all prints looked the same, but in her more low-tech experimental ceramic printing, what she likes is the one-off detail of each piece. Each has a unique quality which will attract many ceramophiles.

It is always interesting to see the work of a maker who has made the transition between crafts although clearly applying high level skills. Her exploration of possibilities and outcomes is fascinating. As always great to have a new voice in the Gallery.