Mella Shaw – Ceramics for Change: Art, Action and Activism

Mella Shaw speaks about her practice and her conscious choice to use clay to raise awareness and inspire action in the face of the global environmental and ecological crisis. Using examples of her own ceramic projects: Harvest, Sounding Line and Rare Earth Rising, she will explore themes of tipping points, thresholds, longing and loss and challenge our changing relationship to nature. She will contextualise the power of making, its role in activism and explore how the materiality of clay has a unique and meaningful role in telling the urgent stories of our time.

Mella Shaw is an artist using clay to make thought-provoking objects and site-specific installations rooted in activism. For over a decade she has made publicly-engaged environmental work addressing specific issues in the global climate crisis – with an intention to bring lesser-known subjects to a new audience and enact change. She came to ceramics as a second career and has a background in anthropology and museum curation holding the role of Head of Exhibitions at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, and then Exhibitions Manager at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, before focusing fully on her ceramics practice. Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2013, she has shown work widely both nationally and internationally, having pieces in various public and private collections. She lives and works in Edinburgh, is visiting lecturer in Ceramics Design at Central St Martins and recent Ceramic Tutor at the Royal College of Art and City Lit in London. Mella was awarded the Henry Rothschild Ceramic Bursary Prize in 2021 and was the winner of the Award prize at the British Ceramics Biennial in 2023.