Rosella Schembri at Villa Bologna

Rosella Schembri, potter at Space for Clay is Visiting Artist at Ceramika Maltija and the Villa Bologna gift shop during the month of August. She will be on site every Wednesday (10.30-13.00hrs) and Saturday morning (12.30-15.30hrs).

Her exhibition of Ceramics will be on display in the gift shop every day from Monday to Saturday 9am to 7pm. In January 2014, The Villa Bologna Gift Shop launched a monthly 'Visiting Artist Programme'.

The aim of our project is to collaborate and share our space with other artists and also to inject life into our workshop (Ceramika Maltija) and gift shop. Way back in the 1920's, Lady Strickland was co-responsible for setting up 'The Malta Industries Association,' with the objective of safeguarding local artisanship for posterity. We at Villa Bologna, are going back to our roots and extending a welcoming hand to promoting local endeavour and artistic potential and cultivating a certain pride in a 'Mahdum f'Malta' ethos.

And August is Rosella's turn to bask in the sun This is what she has to say about her craft: ‘It’s the journey that counts.’ I find that clay gives me the space, variety and challenge to keep me on the never-ending path of discovery and experimentation. When I first started dabbling in clay, I had no ambition to reach any level of fame and still don’t. However I would like to see my pots featured at various levels of exhibition. My pots reflect my fascination with simple decoration and individualism. As a studio potter, all my pots are one-off simply because each one is designed, made and decorated individually with no effort to copy or make identical ones. This keeps me searching for the perfect mug, dish, bowl and wall hanging. The other aspect that I look forward to is the tactile and texture feel when the pot has been glazed and fired. This enables me to investigate the usage of a number of natural tools which are impressed or embedded and allowed to have their own ‘say’ in the finished pot. Clay gives me the freedom to stretch both the material and my imagination to the limit and this has led, many a time, to discovering avenues which would not have been encouraged in classroom settings. I believe that it is important to learn the techniques required and this would help in avoiding many disappointments following the multiple firing processes. However, I also believe that there is no ‘good or bad’ method of making a pot, only whether the finished pot is aesthetically pleasing and successful in carrying out the function it is meant for. May I never reach the end of the journey and always be able to embrace ‘new ways of working’ with clay.

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