rhian jones
Rhian Jones (b. 1991, Wales) extends the exhibition’s exploration of material through an intensely physical ceramic practice rooted in the landscape surrounding her home in Llanelli, an industrial coastal town in South Wales. Her vessels are saggar fired in the kiln, where colour and surface emerge through gathered seaweed, wild vegetation, ash and the unpredictable chemistry of fire itself. Slow, labour-intensive and deeply attuned to natural cycles, her process embraces the dialogue between maker, material and fire, allowing transformation to unfold through collaboration with the elements rather than the imposition of control.
Produced during a period of mourning, Bare is a body of work that explores grief through absence, vulnerability and material transformation. The title reflects the feeling of being emotionally stripped back and exposed in mourning, while the restrained whiteness of the vessels gives visual form to this state of rawness. Their whiteness is neither symbolic nor decorative but material: a deliberate reduction that allows contour, surface and the traces of fire to carry their emotional weight. Smoke, ash and mineral deposits accumulate across each form like geological strata, recording the passage of the firing process as much as the artist’s hand.
Installed as a contemplative field, the works assume an almost architectural presence, existing somewhere between memorial and domestic ritual.
The exhibition includes a series of monumental hand-coiled vessels—Tall Vessel III, IV and V—their elongated forms recalling the enduring language of ancient vessels and archaeological fragments. Weathered through smoke, ash and mineral deposits, they possess the quiet authority of objects recovered from the earth rather than newly made.
Rooted in the Welsh landscape and shaped through an intimate, responsive relationship with natural materials, Jones’ vessels stand as enduring records of touch, labour and transformation—where the artist’s hand remains inseparable from the elemental forces that complete the work.
August 2026 Exhibition, Richeldis Barcelona.
