Phoebe Collings-James

London

Given that her practice encompasses painting, sculpture, ceramics and sound, Phoebe Collings-James’s 2021 exhibition ‘A Scratch! A Scratch!’ at Camden Art Centre was something of a calling card: her multi-disciplinary talents were on display in a show that included ceramic breastplates, multi-panel clay ‘paintings’ marked by sgraffito, and a soundscape co-produced with the composer Mwen in which ceramic vessels full of water became receptacles for fragments of sound. For Collings-James, a British artist of Jamaican heritage, such vessels are a metaphor for the human condition: fragile bodies whose contents are in flux. Not all of her ceramic work is so conceptual, however: some is more playful, such as Creep (orange and moss) (2014), a sculpture of a primordial creature with a lolling tongue. In 2021 Collings-James launched Mudbelly Teaches, a free ceramics course for Black people in London, taught by Black ceramicists and artists. Her work is in the collection of York Art Gallery, Arts Council England and Southampton City Art Gallery, among other places.

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