Tom Cartmill is based in Reading, working from a studio unit on a farm just outside the town. Now settled in Berkshire, Tom has spent much of his adult life overseas, particularly in New Zealand, Southern Spain and Sicily. His work is exhibited widely and can be found in numerous private collections around the world, and also in a growing number of public and corporate collections.

Artist Statement: “Change through time and the inevitable accumulation of experience are themes that have underpinned my practice from early on. The way that buildings and much used objects age, weathering and transforming with the passage of time, is a constant source of inspiration. I work at evoking a ‘patina of experience' in my pictures. This directly relates to the methods used to make my work, where I combine conventional painting techniques with more innovative processes: Layers of media are built up, to be abraded, worn through and overlaid yet again, mirroring the passage of time and giving glimpses of the unfolding story of the making of the work itself.

As well as an abiding interested in visual perception, I am interested in the function of memory, in particular, the fact that our understanding of the world around us (people, places, concepts) is filtered or conditioned through our memories. There also seems to be a connection that, however much we toil to comprehend and to broaden our knowledge, our understanding will never be whole.”

Michele Bianco is a ceramicist based in Scotland, who works with a range of stoneware clays and hand builds all her pieces. Michele originally trained in architecture, and she credits having come to clay from a background in sculpture and architecture with leading her to become much more concerned with making visually interesting objects than with functional items.

The starting point for Michele’s work is always walking and sketching, and she is inspired by the forms, patterns and textures in the world around her – the mesh of branches on wintry trees, the geometric patterns in eroded rock faces or the intricate structures of pods, leaves and petals. In the winter, she becomes more focussed on found objects that are reminders of the past seasons – pods, husks, decaying plant forms and flotsam washed up by stormy seas; these are the things that have inspired the pieces selected for the REVERBERATIONS exhibition.

Michele writes about her work: "I prefer to use hand building techniques – principally slab building and some pinching and coiling – as I find they give me the complete freedom to explore form. I also like to work slowly so hand building suits me. I started carving into my forms at the beginning of 2018 and this has become my principal way of creating my finished forms. It is slow, delicate work which I find totally absorbing and allows me to become completely focussed on my work." That absorption and concentration of the maker is definitely communicated in these beautiful vessels which are sculptural objects of contemplation.