Swindon Museum and Art Gallery
Grant Aston (b.1980, Stoke on Trent, UK) is based in London. His work has been included in a number of exhibitions including the British Ceramics Biennial, Stoke on Trent (2012); the Ceramic Art London Fair at the Royal College of Art, London (2014); and at Bluecoat Display Centre, Liverpool (2013). Aston’s robust clay sculptures are inspired by contemporary life, metalwork, architecture and science. The Omega Fund acquisition Radioactivitat is striking in terms of its innovative use of material in which different types of clay and glazes are used to expand the boundaries of ceramic art.
For their Omega Fund acquisition Swindon Museum and Art Gallery identified Fenella Elms and Grant Aston as two contemporary ceramists who would diversify and energise their collection of twentieth- and twenty-firstcentury studio ceramics. Aston’s expressive pieces echo the abstract brushwork of artists such as Basil Beattie and Christopher Le Brun, while simultaneously reflecting the hand-built innovation of Sara Radstone and Gordon Baldwin and therefore enable Swindon Museum and Art Gallery to make a link between the ceramics and modern art collection.
Presented by the Contemporary Art Society through the Omega Fund, 2015