Tim Copsey, 'Tea Bowl (Issue Edge Rock)'

Tim Copsey’s ceramics combine the opulent and the organic. The Peak District, which surrounds his home and studio, is a lively landscape filled with flux, texture and luster, providing both inspiration and material. The gold and silver burnishes on many of Copsey’s pieces are a response to rushing waterfalls and the dark reflections of peat pools. The Peak’s rock formations inspire layered, undulating, or coarse forms, whilst sections of grit stone and granite from the Pennines are often folded into the surface itself. In this way, his pieces are both about and of the landscape. Whether hand-building or throwing, his process is an interaction with material. He begins with adaptations in clay, Copsey pushing each piece to the limits of stability, before investigating the interactions of glazes and the effects of firing. There is a conversation with the kiln, a push and pull between control and submission; wood firing creating fluid transformations which are often unexpected. His process is one of constant change, resulting in pieces which are mercurial: shifting with the light, modifying in each angle viewed, conversing with their environment.