Claudia Clare 2017

The Wootton Pots are my record of the house and landscape I grew up in. Realising they may not always be in my life, I decided to make the pots in 2014, the year of some mighty and magnificent flooding. The previous year had been one with a long hot Summer, much of which I spent there, with my late mother, while my flat in London was being ‘improved.’ The project of remembering Wotton in pots, continues. I have loved this land in all weathers and all seasons. These are just the start.

This exhibition includes two more large-scale pots, showing far more inhospitable, less ‘managed’ landscapes. The vast and treacherous mountains of the Southern Balkans saw the Great Serbian Retreat of 1915/16 and depicts three extraordinary British women who were working with the Scottish Women’s Field Hospitals during that period of WWI. Some three hundred thousand refugees were forced to flee Serbia to Macedonia through the mountain passes. A hundred years later, my friend Hossein, a Kurd from Iran, took the overland route, across similarly treacherous terrain, from Iran, in search of safety and asylum in Britain.

London cityscapes, in early, mid, and late Summer, teeming with people, form the third group in this collection. People shape landscapes but landscapes affect people and shape our thoughts and memories at least as much.

Iris Bowl

Three Generations

Floods at Dawn

Last Laugh

Overton Windows