What is a body? A figurative sculpture course.

Phoebe Collings-James led a free one day sculpture course taking inspiration from artists Beverly Buchanan, Senga Nengudi, Ana Mendieta and more, who have in varied and innovative ways approached questions of embodiment. Attendees had the opportunity to create their own sculptures in ceramic, while learning basic hand-building techniques such as pinching, coiling and slab building.

For Black attendees only, this workshop stemmed from Mudbelly ceramics studio’s Mudbelly Teaches, a roaming teaching facility offering free ceramics courses for Black people in London, taught by Black ceramicists. Funding was available for those who may need help attending.

This course covered:

Hand building techniques
Decorating techniques
Development of a ceramic sculptural work.

Additional information The Artists Share this event

Additional information

The building is fully wheelchair accessible. Please visit our access page on our website for more information on getting here, parking and facilities.

Adults’ courses are 18+ unless otherwise stated.

Evidence of concessionary status must be shown on the first day of the course.

Booking on a course at Camden Art Centre signifies your agreement to our terms and conditions as stated in our Learning Agreement.

Bookings are non-refundable and non-transferable, unless the course is cancelled by the Centre. See Learning Agreement for details.

Course attendees must adhere to our Covid-19 safety measures as stated in our Learning Agreement.

Please note we require course attendees to have undertaken a lateral flow test (that produced a negative test result) within the preceding 48 hours before a session.

The Artists

Mudbelly Teaches is an intersectional Black queer feminist pottery space that seeks an intimate, reciprocal approach to learning. Across a range of locations and unique formats, they offer free and low-cost ceramics classes for Black people in London, taught by Black ceramicists. They are excited by the holistic potential of ceramics, recognising the therapeutic and spiritual benefits of working with clay. It is their belief that intentional spaces like this are needed, in an overwhelmingly white and classist industry in the UK, to disrupt the multifaceted access barriers which are caused by endemic racism.

London-based artist, Phoebe Collings-James works across sculpture, video, sound and performance. She is a recipient of the Freelands Lomax Ceramics Fellowship, and her recent works have been dealing with the object as subject, giving life and tension to ceramic forms through an engagement with eroticism and the haptic qualities of clay, alongside inscribing sgraffito into ceramic paintings, including symbols, African folklore and mythic traditions. Collings-James’s founded Mudbelly ceramics studio as a personal practice and research outlet, but has since grown to encompass a shop and a teaching facility offering free ceramics courses for Black people in London, taught by Black ceramicists.