HALIMA CASSELL: FROM THE EARTH | WATTS GALLERY ARTISTS’ VILLAGE

 Halima Cassell, Bo Orb, 2023, clay. Photo courtesy of Watts Gallery Trust

It’s a well-worn practice, of course, for curators to invite artists to produce site-specific pieces for exhibitions. But rarely does it work quite this well.

Sculptural ceramicist Halima Cassell admits she had never heard of the Watts Gallery Artists’ Village, near Guildford in Surrey, before she was invited to become the first contemporary artist to exhibit there since its restoration in 2011.

But as soon as she entered the Watts Cemetery Chapel, she fell in love with the eclectically styled terracotta building, realising that the artistic vision of Mary Watts, who oversaw its exterior and interior design 125 years ago, bore uncanny similarities to her own. A pan-cultural spiritual curiosity, a feminine touch, a love of curvilinear forms. Further exploration of the Watts Gallery, and Mary and artist-husband George’s purpose-built Arts and Crafts studio home, ‘Lymnerslease’, only added to her enthusiasm about the collaboration.

Watts’ curatorial team had already made the connection. Cassell was born in Pakistan and raised in Lancashire, and her pattern-led pieces have been influenced by motifs from both Islamic and Christian architecture, as well as the geometry of nature. Her exquisitely crafted work, exploring the dynamic relationship between interior and exterior, is held in many public collections, including the V&A and Hepworth Wakefield, and a recent major exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery has further raised her profile. “As soon as we looked into her work,” says head of collections Laura MacCulloch, “we knew she would be perfect for the Watts, it was a gut instinct.”

This fine exhibition demonstrates Cassell’s virtuosity in a variety of materials, including bronze, glass, gesso, marble, wood and paper. But clay has always been her primary material: a further incentive to participate was the chance to work with Compton clay, dug from the grounds of the site. This was the material used for the structure of the chapel: Mary Watts had created a pottery workshop in the ‘village’ where she trained up local apprentices. Highlight pieces commissioned for this exhibition include two ceramic works, a sphere and a framed relief, both fashioned from Compton clay, both riffing on the motif of the Bodhi leaf, a Buddhist symbol featured in the chapel: Mary Watts was a great advocate of ‘universal religion’.

There are also older pieces on show, from the artist’s collection. Since 2009 Cassell has been working on a project, Virtues of Unity, in which she creates hand-carved vessels, each made from unglazed clay dug from a different country, each echoing the imperfect symmetry of nature. Her aim is to produce a piece from every country in the world, and 45 examples – using clay from such diverse countries as Iraq, the USA, Kenya, China, Indonesia and Wales – are beautifully illuminated in the downstairs gallery, all named after a relevant virtue: ‘Courage’ for Iraq, ‘Serendipity’ for Japan, ‘Love’ for India. Every piece, while similar in form, is unique in its design, and hue; placed together they make a powerful statement about diversity, and interconnectedness. It is a statement, you imagine, that Mary Watts would have approved of: among the multi-cultural visual references within her chapel stands a ring of ethnically undefinable art nouveau figures embodying the different ‘Virtues’.

There are many good reasons to visit the Watts Gallery and Artists’ Village, whatever you think of the nature of ‘England’s Michelangelo’ George Watts’ rather overbearing canvases and sculptures, examples of which abound in Limnerslease and the gallery. The chapel, in particular, is a wonder. If you haven’t been, or haven’t been for a while, the multifaceted synergy between the eclectic vision of Mary Watts and the category-crunching creations of Halima Cassell makes a compelling case to pay a visit this spring. The show runs until June 18.