There’s an emphasis on precision and technique in the ceramics and sculptures of Matthew Groves. You can sense this through the organization and attention to detail upon entry to his studio. The space is clearly organized. Tools are properly sorted. Research materials are neatly hung. Groves’ work space amplifies efficiency. This week The COMP Magazine travelled north to Rogers Park to talk with Groves about is move from the UK to the United States, his relationship to and understanding of the history of England’s post-colonial northwest, his obsession with simple tools, his current studio production, and the connection between his studio practice and teaching.
You have been working in Chicago for several years. And I assume you consider this home. I am wondering if we can start with discussing your life prior to moving to the U.S. Can you share with us any early experiences that that prompted your dedication to ceramics as an artform?
No medium gives me more joy to work with than clay. When I was a kid, I dug some from a building site at the end of our street, made little animals, and dried them in the heat from the sun. Witnessing this transformation was a shining moment which I try to relive every day. In addition, my father was a professional folk musician, and it was exciting to follow him around clubs and festivals in the 1970’s where I met many musicians and craftspeople who demonstrated how music and traditional crafts are universal, generational, and diverse. Later in college I had the most excellent teachers who revealed the dualistic nature of ceramics as being both a radical human endeavor (sculpture) and a craft used to create objects of conspicuous utility. It’s a fabulous global phenomenon with a rich cultural history reflecting many different values and expressions and it can teach us a lot about ourselves in relationship to each other.
What prompted your move to the states?
The idea of emigration was part of my consciousness growing up; Liverpool being a significant port city, and my father singing songs about the sea, emigration, the slave trade etc. Post Grad, I built a professional life in London, working as a freelance fine arts technician, part time educator, and running my own studio. By chance I met a couple who ran an ‘Art School’ in Firenze called ‘Studio Art Centers International’ or ‘SACI’. They offered me a nine-month contract for the upcoming academic year. It would mean giving up my part time gigs, my studio and my apartment, but it was an exciting opportunity, and I said yes! This is where I fell in love with Sarah Nishiura, an American from Detroit, who was teaching at the same school, and we decided to move in together almost immediately. When our contracts ended, Sarah moved back to the States, and I went back to London, but not for long. The stage was set for the next big adventure, moving to the USA. That was 1996.
You put an emphasis on technique and craftmanship. This appears in your work history in directing ceramic studios in England and the U.S. Your studio is highly organized and when we started to discuss your tools, you appeared most excited. Can you tell why you value this aspect of your studio practice?
I’ve always enjoyed how simple tools can extend the possibilities of the hand. My mother’s relatives were Cabinet Makers. I spent a lot of time with my great uncle Pete who was a brilliant woodworker/handyman, helping him fix windows, gates, doors etc. Also, on my dad’s side, I saw musical instruments as the tools of his trade, and there was a bunch around the house growing up that I loved playing with.
Merseyside has many museums built by magnates with the profits they made from the slave trade or from enforced labor practices in their colonies after the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. For example, ‘The Lady Lever Art Gallery’ in Port Sunlight built by William Hesketh Lever. The nexus of their collections included designs by 18th and 19th century industrialists like Josiah Wedgwood. These objects were incredibly refined, almost always figurative, and the stories they embodied made a big and lasting impact on me.
I am fascinated with process, and with working towards certain standards, and I see every object as a sign or symbol, a medium for the transference of ideas, thoughts and feelings. I incorporate recognizable elements in my work, but I also favor abstraction, and it’s always my hope that the meaning should remain dependent upon the viewer’s own poetic imaginations.
I find your series of teapots designed after buildings demolished in the U.K. interesting. The series plays with memory, life cycles, home, the quotidian, etc. Can you describe this series in terms of you selection process and why you decided to produce this series?
‘Teapots in the form of significant buildings from my childhood in the Northwest of England, now demolished’. These teapots stand as metaphors for collective memory and social identity. I was motivated to do this work because my mum has advanced Alzheimer’s, and although she remains on Merseyside, she has no concept of her physical location. Conversely, I find when I return home to visit, an increasing number of formative spaces from my childhood have been demolished and exist now only in my memory.
The buildings were chosen because of their significance. For example, one is based on Wallasey Art School, where I first formally studied Ceramics back in 1982. Originally called Liscard Hall, it was built in 1835 by Sir John Tobin, a slave ship captain, and it was burned down by vandals in 2007. Another represents a tower block on a Public Housing project in Birkenhead called Oak & Eldon Gardens. Built in 1958 to house a post WWII growing population, it was supposed to be utopian but became dystopian due to a lack of public resources. Demolished by controlled explosion (the first ever in Britain), which I witnessed in 1979. There is also a Tea Caddy in the set, based on a Cadbury’s Chocolate Factory. It’s now demolished and the adjacent factory which manufactures Typhoo Tea, will also close soon. Both Cadbury’s and Typhoo were very important area employers and many of my schoolmates and friends’ family members worked there.
The idea is to host a tea party on Merseyside where participants are invited to bring their own significant teapots to share their stories and I share mine back. I really want to create opportunity for respectful conversation about important societal issues such as the legacy of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the tea and sugar industry, the class system, public and private housing, and access to education. My objective is to look beyond my own personal experience, to consider what have we collectively lost and gained, to share knowledge and to develop collective intelligence regarding what we value, how to interpret the past and reconsider the future.
Can we talk about sheep and rams? This series focus on a herd currently in development. You discussed the struggles with fully understanding this body of work. There’s a sense of irony and metaphor that references the present. What are you seeing this work to be at present?
‘The Herd’ reflects some aspects of my personal history in relationship to current events. It’s also an attempt to reinterpret objects that were manufactured in the early 1800’s in Stoke-on-Trent, England, where I did my Undergraduate degree in the mid 1980’s. During the Industrial Revolution, thousands of former farm laborers worked in new manufactories, some of which produced bucolic vignettes representing a lost way of life. I very greatly admire the work of some of these early entrepreneurs, and as an immigrant, I can relate to the feelings of nostalgia and loss that these ornaments represented.
Matthew Groves, Big Yin and Big Ewe, glazed white earthenware, 2025
In addition to your studio practice, you teach at Loyola University. Do you see any relationship between your studio practice and teaching experience? Do you have any recurring items you hope to share with your students?
My teaching and studio practice are inextricably linked. Everything I do in the studio is supported by, informed by and scaffolds into my teaching. My studio practice (and teaching) presents an opportunity to live an ideal existence, where work is meaningful and hopefully relevant as opposed to being simply transactional. Having a studio and the time to work in it is a privilege so I must be certain that this is what I want and that it has value. Many of my former students are out there making and selling art, and my hat is off to them because it’s very, very difficult to survive out there, where there are no safety nets, and not much appreciation for art in our society.
What’s the plan for the remainder of the year? Are you working toward an exhibition? Planning addons to the new home? Or anything else you care to share?
I am making a few shepherds to supplement ‘The Herd’, and I am fantasizing about creating works which embody the Spirit of Christmas Past, Present and Future from the 1977 musical adaptation of Charles Dickens a Christmas Carol, starring Albert Finney, a movie which I have always loved. Starting with Christmas Present, I hope to make a giant chalice filled with ‘the milk of human kindness’.
For additional information on the teaching practices and teachings of Matthew Groves, please visit:
Matthew Groves on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/digitburnit/
Loyola University Chicago – http://luc.edu/dfpa/facultyandstaffdirectory/profiles/matthewgrovesma.shtml
Matthew Groves: Universal Statuary – https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/matthew_groves.html
The Visualist – https://thevisualist.org/2014/08/matthew-groves-artist-talk/
Ceramics Art Network – https://ceramicartsnetwork.org/ceramics-monthly/ceramics-monthly-article/Universal-Statuary-The-Work-of-Matthew-Groves
Artist interview and portrait by Chester Alamo-Costello
