Co-Lab is an annual series of artist-led workshops, organised in collaboration with LU Arts and free to all Loughborough University Students. Taking place across one week each January, workshops are designed to cross disciplinary and methodological boundaries, introducing participants to artistic methods that can be used to address contemporary social, political and technological concerns. 

"As objects, tiles have an uncertain, intermediate status. They have dependency. A tile is functional, but not structural. It requires support, and must exist in proximity to something else, most probably architecture. Nor are tiles discrete. A tile is only ever a fragment of a larger scheme. Tiles are therefore defined by external relationships. A fundamental characteristic of the tile is its ability, en masse, to cover a surface completely. It is possible to tile with some shapes - squares, rectangles, or hexagons, for example - but not others." - Alun Graves – Senior Curator of Ceramics and Sculpture at The Victoria & Albert Museum (From the introduction to Raw’s solo exhibition Clad in 2017)

Matthew Raw will lead participants to work individually and collectively to unpick the above quote, and create tiles to cover a designated area in the Fine Art Gallery gallery. This is a practical session involving rolling clay in the ceramics workshop and exploring different techniques, textures and clay bodies.

Booking

Please click here to book (Loughborough University students only). A £3 deposit is required, refundable upon attendance. No prior experience or specialist knowledge is required.

Matthew Raw is ceramics artist and Jerwood Prize winner who seeks to push the possibilities of clay to communicate and to challenge public perceptions of what it can do as a material, He uses tiles and letterforms to tell the stories of people and places. He is a co-founder of Manifold Studio, an artistic collective of nine RCA graduates, and has participated in group shows, collaborative projects and exhibitions in London, Munich, Copenhagen, Detroit and more – including an Art on the Underground project at Seven Sisters with architecture collective Assemble.