Fred Gatley ‘The Rabley Series’ – Ceramics in Response to the Landscape.

Fred Gatley, ‘The Rabley Series’ Porcelain bowl with cast bronze base (Rabley inclusions)

For over thirty years Fred Gatley has been carefully incorporating found materials within his pieces, many of these introduced into the clay bodies themselves. Sands, silts, muds, brick fragments, stones and rusting iron have all been used, combined with drift woods and even waste copper scraps, all of these bringing to the work their own story and location.

In ‘The Rabley Series’ Fred has responded to the landscape and environment of Rabley Home Farm, a working arable farm set in the ancient Wiltshire downs. The landscape throws up echoes of its history including fragments from the Neolithic, Iron and Roman ages together with the everyday chips of a contemporary working farm.