For Clipped-in, the group of artists behind Castle Park Art Centre's upcoming exhibition, Beyond Landscape, this has been a very strange year.

The five friends and colleagues, who work across a variety of media, from textiles to ceramics to charcoal, are united by their love of mountaineering, an activity which inspires many of their pieces.

Usually, therefore, the artists would immerse themselves in the landscapes of Britain, Europe and beyond, drawing from mountain and seascapes in the creation of their work.

However, earlier this year, just as the group decided on Beyond Landscape as the theme of their latest exhibition, the Covid-19 pandemic promptly put paid to any hope of interacting with these natural environments in person.

In this series of articles, I speak with Clipped-in's artists about the effect of lockdown on their work, as well as their vision for the Beyond Landscape exhibition.

Philippa Maye

As a transplant recipient, the coronavirus lockdown was a particularly difficult time for ceramic and mixed media artist Philippa, who "decided to hunker down and go nowhere" in order to protect herself.

"At the beginning I felt very directionless. The work I was doing had come into a kind of cul-de-sac, and I felt quite stuck," she says.

"But then, as time went on I started to get more frustrated with what was happening, with how it was being handled: I got quite angry.

"My work is usually quite conceptual, quite in-the-head and analytical, and I try to be quite precise and methodical. And this time I just wanted to break out of that, and I wanted to do something that was much more personal and emotional to me.

"So I decided I would look at what landscape meant to me, but after being so constrained with my shielding, I decided to look at my inner landscape. So I started to think of it in emotional and psychological terms."

Much of Philippa's previous work is concerned with the artistry of old maps and sea charts, whose lines and lettering meander across her ceramics. However, Philippa continues, "as much as I love that it didn't feel particularly personal or emotional."

In contrast, "in this body of work I think the constraint of not going out has made me look inwards, and I've managed to do some work that I'm really quite pleased with, which I've poured my emotions into.

"In this exhibition, I've had the ideas and I've just gone with them. So it's been much more instinctive."

"It may not be clear to anyone else when they look at the pieces, but I made a completely different body of work as a result of the lockdown."

One of Philippa's Beyond Landscape pieces involves a kind of "Pandora's box", inspired by the etymological link between 'Pandora' and 'pandemic'. Inside the box, visitors to the exhibition will see etched all the negative words associated with lockdown, with all the positive thoughts written across the outside.

"It's the idea of 'keeping a lid on it'," Philippa explains, "the idea of a vessel that you can put your negative thoughts in, but that is also something beautiful."

Following this theme of outward calm versus inward intensity, Philippa also produced a series of mannequins, which progress from the stillness of an androgynous automaton to the flux of a "much more expressive", clearly gendered figure.

In this way, she reflects the personal dimensions of lockdown, and their place within the universality of this crisis.

Therefore, despite its challenges and tragedies, Covid has, paradoxically, benefitted Philippa's work, allowing her to inject a heightened sense of feeling and passion into her pieces.

"I'm incredibly lucky in that because I do appreciate that other people's experience of and response to the pandemic will have been different."

"I can see that this [mode of creation] has a potential for further exploration, so I will carry on in this more intuitive way of working, which is more responsive to material," she adds.

"I absolutely love watching my hands work. Once you know how to do it you can simultaneously be engrossed in it, and also step back and watch yourself. I really like that."

Philippa's beautiful ceramics are now out of the kiln and ready for display in the Beyond Landscape exhibition, which you can enjoy from tomorrow.

[I]The Beyond Landscape exhibition will run until Wednesday 28th October at the Castle Park Arts Centre gallery. Entry is free and the centre is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10am-4pm.

You can find out more about Clipped-In, including commissions and previous exhibitions, here.

Philippa can be contacted at: [email protected]