Ian Byers

Ian was born in Birmingham – a city famous in its past for guns, cars, motorbikes and jewellery: a city of makers. He studied ceramics at the Central School of Art, London. His teachers included Gordon Baldwin and Dan Arbeid who encouraged skills and making of all types, from hand-building to industrial techniques as possible means of artistic expression. Ian’s own teaching and exhibiting in the UK, Europe and the Far East has provided opportunities to produce work as a response to different places and cultures.

Working with clay has always been central, using its opportunities for sculptural, plastic expression and he has introduced found objects of other materials allowing each material its voice.

Ian’s work has always involved change and evolution. Change involves and invites tension, release, chaos and the possibility of a new sort of aesthetic, which recycles through destruction and remaking. Recent work exploits and exults in a play of the lost, damaged, destroyed, and deconstructed environment combined with the potential for repurposing forms and materials. A challenging new beauty and vision can arise from breaking and remaking.