Philip Hardaker (b. 1954)

Philip Hardaker - Sculptor, Ceramicist and Mosaic Artist
Arts Consultant for Community, Education and Public Arts

Philip Hardaker born in Harrogate, North Yorkshire in 1954. He attended Harrogate College of Art in 1975 then went on to North Staffordshire Polytechnic to gain a first class honours degree in Fine Art Sculpture, during the time he spent much of his time at The Burslem School of Art and was taught by Arthur Berry. Moving to London in 1977 at the height of the Punk culture, he went to The Royal College of Art gaining his MA in Fine Art Ceramics 1980. His lecturers included Eduardo Paolozzi, Peter Blake and The Marquess of Queensbury. 

Philip moved to Somerset in 1980, renting a studio in Bruton from Dutch painter and famous antiques dealer and collector Henk Huffener.

Since 1985 he has lived in a seventeenth century Packhorse Inn on the edges of Stoke on Trent, working as a sculptor mainly in the public sector and undertaking many educational projects and private commissions.

Hardaker describes himself as "an accumulator, a shifter of detritus collecting the flotsam and jetsom of our wasteful consumer society and transforming these materials into art. He represents his work as archaeological sculptural paintings made from clay and found objects. For thirty years he has been digging up ancient and modern ceramic shards from Staffordshire and around the world. He employs these fragments of past ages along with his own modelled and cast ceramic elements of heads, animals and aeroplanes in ceramic collages of considerable intricacy and beauty. Hardaker's work has political and ecological objectives and concerns in communicating comment on historical events. The work is also intrinsically linked with being English and celebrating the past production of Staffordshire ceramics and creativity."

His philosophy, ideas and messages behind the work capture the age we live in with both serious intent and irony and a strong sense of humour.

Barewall believes that Philip is a highly original and authentic artist, The Potteries very own Pop Artist, painting in ceramics whilst promoting the area and all its riches through his enduring work. We can only see his work becoming a collectable of the future.