Tina Vlassopulos

London-based Tina Vlassopulos is a leading hand-builder of vessel-based sculptural forms. Educated at Bristol Polytechnic, she makes pieces that are full of latent energy and movement, their energy directed in the twists, curves and spirals that makes her work so distinctive. Vlassopulos’s carefully burnished earthenware has a strong elemental quality, but despite its basis in containment, this work moves away from the traditional familiarities in ceramics. It inventively explores space and volume in continually new ways, and while the pots organically allude to the shapes and architecture of the natural world, it is equally urban in feel – and many of the pieces have a distinctly dance-like quality.

David Whiting