Amy Hughes

b. 1985, Dewsbury, UK.

“Amy Jayne Hughes reinterprets historical vase designs while nodding at the original aesthetic yet leaving space for the clay.

“Hughes’ vases resemble pixelated images of historic vases; they are sketched from the old but resemble nothing of the past - they occupy a place entirely of their own. Hughes’ blind contour drawing technique captures the object's essence while acknowledging the clay material and her role in the reinterpretation: Fingerprints left in the clay and drawn upon cardboard-like pieces stuck to the vase trace Hughes’ artistic process. The play is consciously left visible.

“Hughes’ work is both a celebration of our ceramic past and reclaiming space for clay.” - Jesper Nøddeskov, Homo Faber Guide.

Amy Jayne Hughes is a Ceramicist, a clay purist and enthusiast. She adores working with her medium and the possibilities that it allows. Primarily a hand builder in her practice, Hughes enjoys combining traditional making techniques and exploring form and decoration and establishing dialogues between the two. Working with an awareness of clay, she feels it is important to leave traces of material identity on a piece to celebrate the uniqueness of it and the wonderfully idiosyncratic ways in which it behaves, highlighting and drawing attention to rather than covering over. This allows for brushstrokes and dribbles of slip, raw cut and torn edges, exposed joints and considered application of glaze.

Taking inspiration from historically significant ceramic objects and collections, Hughes strives to reference the originals whilst reinterpreting and reinventing, to make them more accessible and breathe a fresh life into them. Working with a cultural awareness, Hughes seeks to take such pieces to new audiences and find a place in contemporary culture for them. Sources for her recent ceramic explorations include Grecian, Islamic and 18th century French Porcelain.

Hughes loves to draw and her collections often involve exploring different methods of interpreting her drawings into clay. Most recently, taking a collage-like approach, Hughes uses enlarged elements of her sketches, tracing them directly onto her clay surfaces in decorating slip and attaching them onto her coil and slab-built forms, creating exciting patterns and shapes and working with a colourful and lively painterly approach. The making process informs the composition, not knowing how the final piece may look.

Amy Jayne Hughes studied MA Ceramics & Glass at Royal College of Art, London, 2008-2010 and BA Ceramics at Loughborough University, 2004-2007. She also won the City and Guilds Life Drawing Award.

Notable solo exhibitions include: ‘Garniture’ Croome Court, Worcester, Arts Council England funded (2018), and ‘Vase & Cover’ Room 141, V&A Museum, London Design Festival (2018). Hughes’ notable group exhibitions include: Art Miami, Cynthia Corbett Gallery (2022-23), COLLECT, Cynthia Corbett Gallery, Somerset House (2021-23), British Art Fair, Cynthia Corbett Gallery (2022-23), London Art Fair, Cynthia Corbett Gallery (2022), ‘Piranesi 300: A Visionary Revisited’ Dublin Castle & the Casino at Marino, Dublin (2022), ‘Leach 100’ The Leach Pottery, St Ives (2022), ‘Artefact’, Vessel Gallery (2021), ‘Out Of the Blue’ 50 Years of Designers Guild, The Fashion and Textile Museum, London (2020), COLLECT, Vessel Gallery (2019), ‘Renewed Past’ CODA Museum, Netherlands (2016), ‘AWARD’, British Ceramics Biennial (2015), and 'SWEET 18’, Castle of Hingene, Belgium (2015).

Hughes has been nominated for many prestigious awards and prizes. She was a shortlisted Artist for the Brookfield Properties Craft Award (2023); nominated for the Perrier-Jouët Arts Salon Prize by Barney Hare Duke (2016); shortlisted for the Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize, (2014); shortlisted for the Constance Fairness Foundation Award, December (2011); awarded the Anglo-Swedish Scholarship Bursary (2010); and selected to represent the UK in ‘New Talent’ at the European Ceramic Context, Denmark (2014). Hughes was also winner of Best Community Public Art 2013 project with Pump House Gallery for ‘Imaginariums’

Hughes has undertaken residencies in the UK and Internationally including: V&A Ceramics & Industry Artist in Residence in collaboration with 1882Ltd (April – September 2015); Siobhan Davies Dance Studio with Manifold Studio, (July – September 2013); Anglo-Swedish Scholarship Exchange, Konstfack School, Stockholm (January – April 2011)

Hughes’ work has been featured in Ceramic Review, ‘A Modern Decadence’, CR 309, Annie La Santo (2021); ‘Encore! The New Artisans’, Olivier Dupon, Thames & Hudson, (2015); ‘Collectives: The Model for Success’, Edith Garcia, Ceramics Monthly, (2020); ‘Studio Ceramics’, Alun Graves (2023); ‘Getting to know Amy Hughes’, India Miller, FAIRE Magazine (2023). Hughes was recently included in the Homo Faber Guide of Artisans and Master Craftsmen, curated by The Michelangelo Foundation (2023).

Hughes’ work has been acquired internationally. Collections include: Hendelsbanken, Sweden (2011), ‘Tryst’, V&A permanent collection (2016), and Private Collections in USA, UK, France, Sweden, and Netherlands.

Amy Hughes was a finalist for the Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize in 2014 and is internationally represented by the Cythia Corbett Gallery. She was highly commended for the Brookfield Properties Craft Award 2023.