Sarah Purvey

Sarah Purvey gained both her BA and MA qualifications at Bath Spa some twenty years apart, receiving her MA in ceramics in 2009. On completing the Masters programme Sarah remained a Resident Artist at the University's Ceramic Research Centre in Wiltshire, the former home of Bath Academy of Art. Sarah's ceramic 'Landscape Series' has been shown and collected nationally and internationally, and is including in private collections in Tokyo and New York. Her ceramics also forms part of the Bath Spa University collection at Corsham Court. In 2012 two pieces of the Landscape Series were selected for the prestigious Threadneedle Prize Exhibition for painting and sculpture and were shown at the Mall Galleries in London. In 2010 and 2012 Sarah exhibited in Cork Street, Mayfair with the Katharine House Gallery, Marlborough and Askew Art Henley. Sarah is a full member of the Devon Guild in Bovey Tracey and her work received the panel award of First Prize in the Pound Pill Open in October 2010. Whilst resident at Corsham Court Sarah worked with Bath Spa University leading ceramic enrichment programmes for 6th form A level students within Wiltshire Secondary schools and has been a guest speaker on the Contemporary Context module of the Ceramics Masters Programme at Bath Spa University. Selected exhibitions include the Threadneedle Prize, Gallery 28 Cork Street, Art In Clay Hatfield House, The Bircham Gallery Norfolk, The Hilton Fine Art Gallery Bath, the Devon Guild Bovey Tracey Devon. QUALIFICATIONS: 2009 MA Ceramics, Bath School of Art and Design, Bath Spa University; 1991 BA Ceramics, Bath College of Higher Education; 1988 BTec Ceramics, Plymouth College of Art and Design. COLLECTIONS: Swindon Museum and Art Gallery; Corsham Court, Bath Spa University; Chippenham Museum; Michael Portillo ; Private collections in USA, Japan & Europe. AWARDS: 2018 First Prize Award, Baby Forest; 2017 First Prize Award, Corsham Open Exhibition; 2010, First Prize Award, Corsham Pound Arts Open.

I work predominantly in clay and on paper and explore an intensely physical relationship with drawing throughout my practice. The vessels is tasked to carry and map the journey through my emotional landscape. I make outside of the vessel but it always draws me back, in the same fixating way a figurative artist repeats drawing and interpreting the human form and the landscape artist interprets connections to their surrounding terrain, the vessel is all of that for me. The vessel carries thoughts and ideas, revealing and concealing glimpses of self during the making progress. The vessel is an autobiographical, meditative place, a place to hide in plain site. There’s no room inside the vessel for the placement of external objects, they are not vases or pots to hold anything outside of themselves as their internal space is already full, full of memories of time and place captured in the making.