Heather Gibson
Heather Gibson’s ceramic work draws on geology, archaeology, and abstract expressionism, investigating how materials can both hold and reveal layers of experience. Working intuitively, she strikes, carves, and imprints clay using found objects, allowing forms to emerge through process rather than a predetermined design. Her experimental hand-built forms inhabit a space between function and abstraction.
Reduction firing is integral to her practice. In both gas and wood kilns, flame, ash, and atmosphere leave their own traces, marking the clay in ways that cannot be entirely anticipated. Rather than simply finishing a work, the kiln becomes part of its making, recording the passage of fire on surfaces shaped by heat, movement, gravity and time.
By combining expressive making and glazing techniques with the transformative nature of reduction firing, her work embraces chance discoveries. Through this process, she hopes to reveal the true nature of clay and its ability to give something back.
Heather Gibson is a London-based ceramic artist whose practice explores trace, memory, and mark-making through the material language of clay. In 2024, she completed a Master’s degree at the Royal College of Art, supported by the Marit Rausing Scholarship for Ceramics & Glass. That same year, she was the inaugural Potter in Residence at County Hall Pottery, culminating in her first solo exhibition, Surfacing (2025). Her work has been exhibited in multiple group exhibitions, including Thrown, The Leach Pottery, and Collect Art Fair (2026).
Detail of 'Stratified'
About the collections
The Jingdezhen Residency Series
During a recent residency in Jingdezhen, China, Heather worked with porcelain, local materials and glazes to produce a new body of reduction fired work. Known for its long history of porcelain production, Jingdezhen offered a direct encounter with a place where material knowledge and making are deeply embedded in landscape, culture and tradition.
The Wood Fired Series
Heather Gibson has been experimenting with wood firing in her practice for the past three years. These wood-fired works were developed in collaboration with the Carbon Literacy and Ceramic Kilns Impact Fellowship, led by Professor Peter Oakley at the Royal College of Art. The project explores the carbon footprint of ceramic kiln firings across different fuel sources, including electricity, gas, and wood.
Each piece holds a record of its firing: ash settling, flame and heat moving through the chamber, and glaze responses that cannot be fully predicted. Decisions made in the construction of the kiln and in the stoking of the fire often re-emerge in unexpected and exciting ways, leaving their own traces embedded in the surfaces of the work.
G A L L E R Y C O L L E C T I O N
