In Our Time 

10th October to 16th December 2024

Art Gallery, Chancellor's Building 

An exhibition of work by Phil Hardaker, spanning the last 50 years, with a specific focus on political events. The work included in the show includes a series of assemblages, constructions, mosaics, and sculptures.  

Housed within the Chancellor’s Building, Keele University, an institution Philip has a long-standing relationship with, this beautiful and thought-provoking exhibition has a lot to say! There are pieces of varying scale and intensity, all demonstrating the great intricacies of Philip’s observations and processes. 

Philip is 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.  

Philip’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. 
 
The 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. 

This is the first Philip Hardaker solo retrospective of this scale within the locality and something to be marvelled at, enjoyed and savoured.