Q&A: Barging into 2017 with Matthew Raw

Fast-forward to late 2016 and Matthew joined Zetteler as a client, with our stop off to see him being one of the highlights of Zetteler On Tour. Now that 2017 has arrived the passionate artist is looking forward to an incredible year, which includes his debut solo exhibition at Mile End’s Ragged School Museum, to open in May, coinciding with London Craft Week.

We caught up with Matthew to learn more about Manifold, his explorative work and what on earth he needs a barge for. 

It’s not always the easiest of conversations, but we get there. I usually say that I am an artist who works with clay. I then have to explain that I don’t make pots “like in Ghost”. But my recent focus on making tiles is a more approachable hook. ‘Sculptural tiles’ take a while longer to unpack, so it depends on how much time we have. Teaching and running workshops is part of my practice too, which I enjoy talking about.

In the summer of 2009, my year group on the Ceramics & Glass Masters course at the Royal College of Art, organised and installed an exhibition at the Freud Museum. The planning and event was a success, and we realised that we worked well as a team. After graduating, nine of us (half of the year group) decided to stick together and try and find a space to work. We got lucky when a studio became available in Hoxton unexpectedly, and we pounced, naming our collective ‘Manifold’ after a (loose) Swedish translation meaning ‘many hands / skills’. Arch 33 on Ermine Mews has been home ever since.

'Clad' is the culmination of a three year period exploring the form of tiles, and what they do and can communicate. I’d never rolled a proper tile before being awarded the Jerwood Makers Award in 2013 to create an installation of a tiled pub façade. Since then tiles have held my attention, and most of my recent projects and residencies have revolved around them. This show will challenge me to make works that speak to one another and harmonise with the unique location of the Ragged School Museum. The show will explore our individual roles in the changing nature of the areas in which we live, touching on notions of perception, transience and the “hand-made”. 

My route from home to the studio takes in a stretch of the Regents Canal, so I have a daily relationship with it. My studio is a stone’s through from the canal, which if you head East along it, takes you to the Museum in Mile End. I wanted to celebrate this physical link by transporting my work from where it was made, to where it is to be shown in May. By doing so I’m part of a rich tradition of moving ceramics on the canal – Josiah Wedgwood invested heavily in the canal system to prevent huge percentages of his ceramic factory’s work smashing in transit on dodgy 18th Century roads. 

The grand old building itself was the initial attraction. It’s sign flows over undulating brickwork and it stands proudly looking over both the canal at the back, and Mile End park and stadium at the front. After a few looks around, I approached the Director, Erica Davies, and learnt more about the incredible life the building has had. This includes a significant period when Dr Barnado's set up a school for the impoverished children of the East End.

The trickiest factor was pulling ideas and conversations together, getting them down on paper and communicating it to the Arts Council. But came together it did, and when I got the green light from them I was ready to crack on.

Travelling with work is always attractive. Time spent in Detroit back in 2011 was really important for me in a transformative period. I gave a talk at a residency centre in Denmark entitled: ‘Work you wouldn’t make at home’ exploring how the direct environment in which one makes influences their artistic output. A stand out residency is the one at the V&A Museum – it’s hard to top being paid to go there everyday for 6 months to play around with clay and meet incredibly knowledgeable people.

Out of the blue. They were a year into the project (an Art on the Underground commission for the ‘Underline’ series) but needed a bit of help with how to make tiles. It was a bit intimidating rocking up to their workshop with some rolling pins and a bag of clay, but we got on, and started playing with colouring clay. A year on and we have a thorough body of tests which have informed the overall design. Our tiles will adorn an old triangular kiosk at the entrance to the station on Seven Sisters Road.

My studio had a show at the Siobhan Dance Studio a few years ago called ‘Under the Influence’. We encouraged each other to single out someone who had played a significant role in them becoming an artist. I picked a Manchester based artist called Stephen Dixon who I was mad in to when I started using clay. He describes himself as a political commentator, and his work opened lots of things up for me. Others include (for different reasons) Sam Bakewell, Grayson Perry and Alison Britton.

Lots of my thinking and work comes back to the 'transient movement of people'. It is a wide-ranging topic, but one that for good or bad continues to be incredibly relevant. I like to find individual stories and experiences in among statistics. East London (my home for the last six years) has a rich history of people arriving and leaving – I’m attracted to this melting pot and people’s attitudes of what is working and what is not.