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School of Art
Aberystwyth University
Buarth Mawr
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion
SY23 1NG

Tel: +44 (0)1970 622460

Fax: +44 (0)1970 622461

Email: artschool@aber.ac.uk

Display artist/maker:

Philip Eglin

Born: 1959, Gibraltar

Ceramicist. Eglin trained at Staffordshire Polytechnic (1979-82) and the Royal College of Art, London (1983-86). He was awarded the Jerwood Prize for Applied Arts in 1996. His postmodern aesthetic draws on many sources from popular culture and ceramic history through to high art, and from Gothic madonnas to Abstract Expressionist painters of the 1950s.

Frequent use of graffiti elements carry playful references to street culture and Eglin’s sculptures often incorporate pieces moulded from everyday objects such as coke bottles or throw-away plastic. Although most noted for his figures, Eglin also makes large bucket vessels, and more recently has created installations of jugs which are evocative of medieval forms.

In 2015 Eglin worked in collaboration with Aberystwyth University’s Ceramics Collection in a collaboration funded by the Arts Council of Wales. Focusing on Buckley slipware, Eglin visited the collection and made drawings and photographs of key pieces. He has always been a borrower responding to things he loves in the world around him – great paintings, old pots, children’s drawings, or plastic bottles – all become sources of inspiration.

Eglin worked with children in local schools and produced a new bocy of work which formed the exhibition ‘Philip Eglin: Slipping the Trail & Responding to the Buckley Slipware in the Aberystwyth Collection’. The exhibition toured the UK during 2015-16.