Katie Spragg

Combining clay with a range of processes, including animation and installation, Katie Spragg creates works that aim to arouse curiosity. Her current work explores our relationship with nature; specifically the ways that humans and plants co-exist - how we attempt to curate nature, yet it grows and thrives beyond human ordering.

Through workshops and projects, Katie Spragg often creates work in response to collaboration and the participation of other people, most recently with young people from Lambeth Young Carers and people with Dementia through the Clay for Dementia at the Garden Museum.

Katie Spragg, Future Heritage 2016 Alumna

Katie Spragg works predominately with porcelain, sometimes blending it with stoneware clays to achieve colour variations. She models the majority of the plants and grasses in her hand and assembles them into pieces and installations after firing – often combining them with other materials such as wood, glass, stone or concrete.

She is a tutor at the Royal College of Art, a founding member of Collective Matter; an outreach group who pioneer collaborative practice through clay.

Wilds Of 5 Lely Court Still By Katie Spragg

At Future Heritage

For Future Heritage Katie Spragg, then a new graduate from the Royal College of Art, made a series of new works inspired by the plants growing in Syon Park, where Decorex was held at the time. She also showed ‘Wildness,’ a large scale concrete installation with porcelain weeds growing from its cracks, and her stop-frame animations ‘The Wilds of 5 Lely Court,’ and ‘In the Meadow’.

“It was interesting to show my work to a very different audience and see how their response, questions and the way they engaged with my work, particularly the larger installation piece, differed from my usual art/craft audience. I sold two pieces from the stand. I am still receiving enquiries and have sold to collectors, who saw my work at Decorex.” - Katie Spragg

Current work

Katie Spragg has had work purchased by the V&A and recently completed a permanent installation for the Garden Museum. She has undertaken commissions for the British Ceramics Biennale and Sotheby’s, as well as numerous private collections and commissions. Her work has been exhibited by the Craft Council in London and Miami, included in the British Council’s touring Film Festival (current) and presented at solo shows at Blackwell, Arts and Crafts House, the Garden Museum and Pi Artworks.

She was due to be the first ‘Make’ Artist in Residence at Hauser & Wirth Somerset, which has sadly been cancelled due to the pandemic, but is making work for a group show that should take place there in November 2020.

Katie Spragg’s most recently completed project is ‘Lambeth Wilds;’ a large-scale ceramic installation at the Garden Museum and her largest work to date.

Taking wild, opportunistic plants and the way they may be overlooked or hidden, as its theme, this project aspires to celebrate and make visible these plants and communities local to the museum that may also be overlooked or hidden within our wider society.

Lambeth Wilds By Katie Spragg

If you would like to make an enquiry about Katie Spragg and commissions, get in touch here or visit her website www.katiespragg.com