Susan Halls

Born in 1966 in Gillingham, Kent, Halls made her first clay animal, a pig, as part of her CSE Pottery submission. Full of character and insightfully observed, it set her on a lifelong quest to capture what she terms ‘animal truths’ in ceramic form.

This led her first to Medway College of Art and Design for a National and then Higher National Diploma in ceramics, and later to the Royal College of Art. London, where she spent two years in the ceramics and glass department studying for a Master of Arts degree.

Graduating with distinction, her much lauded RCA show in 1990 quickly established her reputation as a significant talent and secured a prestigious residency at the Banff Center for the Arts in Alberta. Canada.

She set up her first studio in Putney, London in 1991 with the aid of a Crafts Council grant and swiftly rose through the ranks. Just three years on from leaving the RCA she had her first solo exhibition at Andrew Usiskin Contemporary Art, London.

By the mid-nineties her work was included in seminal shows such as The Raw and the Cooked at the Barbican and Ceramic Contemporaries at the V&A. Halls was soon exhibiting her work in Europe, first in Germany, then Slovenia, followed by a residency at the International Ceramics Studio, Kecskemet, Hungary in 1996.

Despite her leading position in the field, Halls’ disenchantment with a perceived lack of regard for figurative ceramics in the UK coupled with the warm reception of her work in the USA led her to leave London for America in May 1998. She would remain there for the next twenty years, exhibiting and selling her work through group and solo shows across the States. Here Halls embraced new opportunities to challenge her practice. Guided by artist teacher Jak Kovatch, she immersed herself in an intensive drawing programme to develop her understanding of anatomy, physiology and improve her skills in rendering three-dimensional form.

It proved to have a profound effect on her work, underpinning her entire artistic practice. Halls returned to the UK in December 2017, first to the University of York as resident artist, then to the small cove of Poldhu near Mullion in Cornwall where she lives with her partner Julian, and her muse, Mussels the cat.

Halls’ work is held in renowned private and public collections across the world, including London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, the Centre of Ceramic Art in York, and the Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art, Shigaraki, Japan.

She has been featured in numerous celebrated books and publications, including Crafts magazine, Ceramic Review and Ceramics Monthly. The writer and critic Peter Dormer was an early advocate. He interviewed her for his books The New Ceramics and The Culture of Craft and selected four of her pieces for purchase by the Contemporary Art Society, London. She was notably the only ceramicist on his proposed list of eminent designers and makers.

Text by Sharon Blakey, 2024

“My obsession with animals and animal imagery has been more or less constant since my childhood so it is beyond doubt that they should be the dominant subject in my work. It seems right and the most honest creative front available. I do believe that part of my drive to make animals is tied up in the primitive need to possess them – like effigies and totems. In my sculpture I’m trying to create an image which traps a kind of animal truth. Direct representation does not interest me. I strive to create work which reinvents animal form, enhancing the facts without being slavish to mere appearance.”