Gabriella Rhodes

Based in North Wales, UK

Gabriella Rhodes is an artist born in Stoke-on-Trent and living in North Wales. She spent much of her childhood in the mountains of Scotland and Wales which created a lasting appreciation for nature and ecology.

Using hand building and carving techniques to make things that sit somewhere between sculpture and craft, her work draws inspiration from natural objects and the surrounding landscapes. Curves and lines that appear on a work serve as a connection to the undulations of a hillside, a curved seed pod or the snaking stem of a plant.Her work is never completely determined from the beginning but is adapted and altered by processes of making. She works responsibly with local or traceable materials and processes that sit gentler on our increasingly unstable planet.

Gabriella graduated from Manchester School of Art in 2018 with a BA in Three Dimensional Design. Since graduating, she has focused her practice on celebrating provenance and uses materials and processes to deepen her understanding of the natural environment. She has spent the last two years honing her skills in low impact, outdoor firings that use carbon to colour the surface of clay rather than commerical glazes and oxides. She was nominated for a residency at Guldagergaad Ceramic Research Centre in Denmark in 2018 where she presented works made solely from unfired clay for the first time and was selected to take part in the Crafting Futures project between the British Council and British Ceramics Biennial in 2021.