Philip Hardaker

CATEGORY: Porcelain
METHOD: Modelling
COLOUR: White
TEXTURE: Very Smooth
FIRING RANGE: 1120°c – 1280°c & 1080°c – 1160°c

Hardaker is an accumulator, a shifter of detritus collecting the flotsam and jetsam of our wasteful consumer society and transforming these materials into art. He represents his work as archaeological sculptural paintings made from clay and found objects. For thirty years he has been digging up ancient and modern ceramic shards from Staffordshire and around the world. He employs these fragments of past ages along with his own modelled and cast ceramic elements of heads, animals and aeroplanes in ceramic collages of considerable intricacy and beauty. Hardaker’s work has political and ecological objectives and concerns in communicating comment on historical events. The work is also intrinsically linked with being English and celebrating the past production of Staffordshire ceramics and creativity.
The philosophy, ideas and messages behind the work capture the age we live in with both serious intent and irony and a strong sense of humour.

Pictures

Epitaph to a Tea Lady
PF 640 (GT Material) used to model woman’s figure – fired to 1250°c then mosaic applied to the surface.

Sound of Extinction
Parian applied to guitar surface – fired to 1220°c.  Royale Porcelain used for application to guitar neck and glaze fired to 1250°c

Visit their website: www.philhardaker.co.uk