One Way or Another: reworking porcelain with Paul Scott and Caroline Slotte at HB381

HB381, in collaboration with Massachusetts-based gallery Ferrin Contemporary, presents One Way or Another, a two-person exhibition of new ceramic works by British artist Paul Scott and Finland-based artist Caroline Slotte, running from January 9 – February 28, 2026. Bringing together two contemporary artists whose practices have been in dialogue for more than two decades, One Way or Another explores the cultural, political and psychological resonances embedded in historic porcelain and faience wares.

Slotte studied ceramics under Scott in the early 2000s, while he was a professor at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design, and since then, both artists have developed distinct approaches to reworking mass-produced ceramic objects. “While their techniques for altering these historic objects find different expressions, their attention to this space of visual and material culture is equally acute, feeding into discourses on craft and cultural studies and museological concerns around heritage and preservation,” HB381 notes in an official release.

Scott is recognised for his blue-and-white ceramics that merge historical techniques with pointed political commentary. Working primarily with vintage transferware, the ceramic artist intervenes in existing imagery to address current events, environmental change and the lived experience of landscape. Many of his works in the art exhibition bear the phrase ‘Cumbrian Blue(s)’, referencing both his home in Cumbria, UK, and the melancholic undertones that often surface in his reimagined landscapes.

“I habitually collect glazed tableware from eBay, junk and antique shops,” Scott writes in the official release. “Some of it has crazed glazing, some may be cracked, chipped or the gold lustre worn from the edges… over time I have grown very fond of these imperfections. Some are simply beautiful in their own right, as cracks trace a line across a form, or blooms in the glaze create vitreous clouds in the glassy surface.”

In series such as New American Scenery, Scott updates the picturesque landscape tradition with images of toll roads, smokestacks and semi-trucks, reframing industrial infrastructure as contemporary scenery. Works such as Cloud Studies (after Thomas Cole & Eadweard Muybridge) similarly overlay historical references with modern symbols, inserting aeroplanes into idyllic skies to underscore shifts in how a landscape is seen.

Slotte, on the other hand, approaches historic ceramics through acts of subtraction. Using sandblasting techniques, she removes glaze and clay from antique plates and tableware to produce delicate tracings, ghostly patterns and areas of erasure. “These acts of redaction, which design historian Glenn Adamson refers to as ‘a strange sort of craft, consisting as it does almost entirely in deletion’, underscore the curious nature of mass-produced decorative objects; by taking away layers of glaze and clay, Slotte draws our attention to their stylised forms and materiality,” HB381 notes.

Slotte’s works often reference well-known blue-and-white patterns such as Blue Willow, Wild Rose and Bosphorus Blue. Series such as American Skies feature rippling fields of azure spheres and drifting clouds, where masking and sandblasting techniques cause certain details to disappear while others emerge with heightened clarity.

“The artist’s technique enacts something akin to a disappearing act; by carefully masking the surface of each plate, then sandblasting what remains, she effaces certain details while bringing others to the fore. Under her hand, enigmatic forms are scoured into the clay body underlying historic plates and platters, calling our attention back to the physical matter of ceramics and glaze: its permeable and rough textures, its opalescent gloss and vitreous liquidity, the light staining and appearance of imperfect yet entirely natural marks of age, use and individuality,” elaborates the art gallery in New York.

Together, Scott and Slotte reveal how seemingly modest objects can open onto expansive cultural and emotional terrain. “Indeed, the carefully-cropped and edited views of city, sky and countryside featured in the two artists’ work are capacious and unexpected, revealing a commentary on landscape that is at once incisive, fragmented and hypnotic,” HB3181 concludes.