
Work by Paul McAllister (Photo: Photographer David P Rowan)
Paul is a ceramicist whose latest works, featured in Made in the Middle, mark a radical shift from his previously controlled studio ceramics.
Paul’s work is on show in Made in the Middle from January 2025 – April 2026.
Hugo Worthy describes the inspiration behind Paul’s work
The ceramicist grew up in the Black Country and has a rich and deep connection to the post- industrial landscape of the region. His experience of the way manmade landscapes accrete layers, through built and discarded materials shapes the way he approaches the ceramic process
The Midlands provide the context for all the makers in Made in the Middle, but it is an especially important setting for McAlister. Historically McAlister has produced highly controlled, functional wheel thrown tableware for which he became know internationally. The work seen here is a radical departure from his previous practice, built on his experiences of the urban landscapes that he inhabits, particularly Birmingham, but also Wolverhampton where he teaches.
The sculptures he creates draw on the qualities of the surfaces and forms of the city environment around him and the contingency of the way that manmade environments slowly develop. In his objects McAlister uses a wide range of clays and glazes that behave in quite different ways in a kiln. This creates objects that have a strong degree of unpredictability to them when they are being fired. The primary risk is that they simply won’t survive the firing process, but what really interests McAlister is how unforeseeable interactions of the materials and the contingency of the outcomes.
The layering of the materials suggest the multiple surfaces of the streets and buildings of inner city Birmingham. Greening walls, rough cement and red brick stacked on top of one another. McAlister has also incorporated elements of the kilns and wheels into his sculptures. These are remnants of the machinery on which he has produced vessels in the past. These metal parts increase the unpredictability of the firing process and in their final form bring to mind the decaying, cast-off machinery, car parts or old tools, that are scattered through the city.
McAlister’s idea of city, and the objects that he creates exploring it have strongly organic feel to them. The city does not develop as a rational, linear structure, but grows slowly, without consistent pattern, and so feels much closer to the natural world than we might at first think.
These works make visible the processes of their making, each one a kind of experiment, pushing new forms, new process and new glaze mixes, and then reusing and remixing previous elements where they have been successful, slowly building a new ceramic vocabulary for the 21st century urban environment.
Hugo Worthy is Arts Curator at Leicester Gallery.