New Ashgate Gallery champions the best of contemporary art and craft providing an unparalleled resource in Farnham, Surrey and beyond
Shopping cart0 itemsCheckout
Zeba Imam
Our friendly and knowledgeable team is happy to help: 01252 713208 | gallery@newashgate.org.uk
Biography
Zeba's work is inspired by the marks of human activity all around us. Bustling cityscapes, old and new jostling for space, time-worn aspects of an industrial building, casual graffiti: they convey the universal human wish to be seen and to communicate: I am/was here.
Clay has a capacity for memory; every mark - intended or unintended - is retained even as it transforms through firing. Working alongside clay's nature, she intends to capture the layered, palimpsest-like, quality of the human story. She uses stoneware clays layered with coloured slips and oxides in various combinations of mark making and sgraffito. She wheel-throws a variety of functional forms, but jars are her favourite. The inside of the jar allows for as much storytelling (by the user) as the outside.
Growing up in India, Zeba came across traditional potters and was mesmerised by clay's movement on the wheel. She discovered clay for herself in the USA when she was working on her PhD in Communication. As she grappled with questions of identity and cultural boundaries, both as a research topic and a lived experience, finding clay made her feel anchored. Clay's tactile quality and the unbroken connection to our collective past drew her to it. For many years, it remained something she dabbled in on and off, as a hobby. That changed in 2017 when she joined the two year diploma at Clay College. She set up her studio at ACAVA Spode Works in Stoke-on-Trent in 2020.
