Sara Radstone

Sara Radstone, born in London in 1955, is one of Britain’s leading ceramic artists, and her work has been widely shown throughout the world for more than four decades. Sara trained at Camberwell School of Art and Crafts, graduating in 1979 as part of a celebrated cohort that included Angus Suttie and Henry Pim. Her work is included in numerous public collections both in the UK and overseas, and she has always combined her professional practice with teaching and lecturing, both in the UK and abroad. Sara has taught on the highly acclaimed Ceramics Diploma Course at the City Lit in London since its inception.

Described by [Shaw] as a "unique and authentic voice", Sara Radstone's work has always pushed against the perceived boundaries of ceramic sculpture. She comes from "...a special generation of artists using clay to open up forms of expression rather than the enclosed and centred object" [A.S]. Her distinctive handbuilt structures explore ideas concerned with memory, history and human traces, loss and absence, and attempt to forge a material language to express these themes. Recent work also incorporates paper, cloth and found ephemera, embracing ideas around frailty, fragmentation and suppression; to what extent can the slightest most fragile scrap of stuff cling on to identity, presence and substance?

In 1979 Sara Radstone established her first studio at 401½ Workshops in South London, receiving a grant from the Crafts Council, followed by an award from the Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Trust. Other awards followed which included Greater London Arts, the Oppenheim-John Downes Memorial Trust, the Unilever Prize and, in 1993, the inaugural Arts Foundation Fellowship.

Sara has exhibited nationally and internationally for 40 years. As well as regular solo exhibitions at Marsden Woo Gallery in London, she has had one person exhibitions at Anatol Orient and Galerie Besson, London, and at Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham; Edinburgh College of Art; Aberdeen Museum and Art Gallery; An Lanntair, Stornoway and Osiris Gallery, Brussels. Numerous group shows at UK and international venues include Keramikmuseet Grimmerhus, Denmark; Galerie Binnen, Amsterdam; Pro Art, St Louis, Missouri; Galerie Marianne Heller, Sandhausen; Galerie L and Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg; Bellas Artes, Santa Fe and New York City; Art Space Niji, Tokyo; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia; Crafts Council Gallery, London; Barbican Arts Centre, London; MOMA Oxford; Contemporary Applied Arts, London. 2017-18 saw the celebration of her career to date with a major retrospective exhibition, 'More than Words' at York Art Gallery's Centre of Ceramic Art