Faye Hadfield

Faye Hadfield shapes a ceramic universe populated by laughing, grimacing, or dreamy faces, oscillating between human comedy and fantastical tale. Each piece seems alive at once vessel and character, sculpture and emotion. Her work, at once humorous, fragile, and profoundly sincere, transforms ceramics into an expressive mirror of our emotions.

Trained at Bath Spa University and the School of the Damned before joining the Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics program at the University of Iowa, Hadfield embraces a free, instinctive, and experimental practice. She also studied at the Kunstuniversität Linz in Austria, where she discovered a performative and open approach to the medium. These experiences led her toward an inclusive vision of creation, a constant dialogue between art, humor, gesture, and material. Her anthropomorphic ceramics, often saturated with color and glossy glazes, oscillate between derision and tenderness. The “pot-portraits” she creates, by turns joyful, sheepish, or mischievous, reinterpret English decorative traditions through a contemporary and feminine lens. Each work becomes a mask expressing vulnerability, joy, or everyday melancholy. This tension between apparent naïveté and emotional depth lends her sculptures a theatrical and psychological dimension.

Active on the international art scene for several years, Faye Hadfield has exhibited in Paris, London, Brussels, New York, St. Moritz, Barcelona, and Eskişehir, where the OMM Modern Art Museum holds her piece Scary Vase in Tropical Purple. She has taken part in numerous fairs and exhibitions, Paris Design Week, PAD London, Ceramic Art Andenne, and Collectible Brussels, often alongside Galerie Florian Daguet-Bresson. Recipient of the Harry Walker Young Artist Award and an Honorable Mention at the University of Mississippi National Juried Show, she will undertake a residency at Ceramics Suro in Mexico in 2025. Her work, both popular and refined, embodies a new sensibility in contemporary ceramics, where laughter, color, and the poetry of gesture regain their full dignity.

Intentionally raw and sensual, Faye Hadfield's creations are the result of applied anthropomorphism. Borrowing the classic shape of the Greek amphora to shape and convey the traditional motif of everyday vases, she allows the plasticity of the clay to take over and become its own slow, raw form. A strange naïveté reigns in her work.

The smiley face and the vase are present in everyone's daily life. There is a pleasant feeling of familiarity and closeness; each piece is unique in its expression, contrasts, and patterns. Chandeliers and emails pop, vibrant and saturated, drawing them closer to the delightful aesthetics of neo-kitsch. This approach mocks the seriously boring aesthetics of certain bourgeois interiors, composed of perfectly executed and unremarkable objects. The works of Faye Hadfield stimulate, captivate, and amuse the eye. Contentment, joy, complicity, self-mockery—her sculptures are nuanced and allow for a wide range of interpretations.

Energetic, smiling, and delicate, much like her works, Faye Hadfield studies at the University of Bath, where she specializes in sculpture and ceramics. In 2022, one of her pieces, “Tropical,” was acquired by the OMM, the Odunpazan Modern Museum in Turkey. This acquisition brings her practice into a new institutional context. She was first exhibited in Ceramics Now in 2021 and has since been represented by Florian Daguet-Bresson.

She is currently pursuing her artistic practice within a research program at the University of Iowa alongside artist Andrew Casto, who is also represented in Europe by Florian Daguet-Bresson.