Despite the postponement of the traditional biennial, July 2021 saw the International Ceramics Festival going online for the first time to celebrate clay with ‘REWIND – Over 30 years of the International Ceramics Festival at Aberystwyth’. We teamed up with ‘Culture Colony’, a Machynlleth based film production company to produce a six hour long programme streamed live on Vimeo thoughout Saturday July 3rd.
This online showcase featured a selection of cherry-picked archive highlights focusing on memorable performances and spectacular live firings interspersed with live-streamed events from the Arts Centre. On site we had mixed media artist Angela Tait creating ‘Smalls’, an installation/performance piece hosted outside the Arts Centre Ceramics Studio. Meanwhile our 2019 demonstrator and ICF Director Wendy Lawrence ran a tile making and glazing workshop for visitors following on from a tile making workshop at Hwb Penparcau, the Penparcau Community Centre.
The programme also featured special guests Ingrid Murphy and Jim Robison who discussed the early years of the festival and potter Steve Mattison who spoke of his involvement with the International Ceramics Studio at Kecskemet, Hungary. The event, which ran between 11am and 5pm was also live streamed onto a screen in the Arts Centre foyer so visitors could enjoy the archive footage too.
