MATTER: MADE OF PLACE - THE SECRET LIVES OF ALICE BILLING HOUSE -

The Secret Lives of Alice Billing House
Beverley Sommerville - Ceramic Artist and Studio Potter -Art-in-Residence May 2025

As a studio potter and ceramic artist, part of Beverley Sommerville’s practice engaged with ideas around material and place. Gathering materials from locations or events that held meaning and inspiration, she added this matter into clay to create bodies of work that embedded and captured moments in time and the essence of place.

This was the approach she brought to her artist residency at Alice Billing House, where she developed workshops and a collection of work examining the connections between the building, its heritage, history, and stories. Her work responded to a time of change and development for the site, celebrating both its historical and future narratives.

Beverley spent several days exploring the building, understanding its layout, and identifying materials she could excavate. She required only small amounts of matter and took only from the detritus and collapsed debris found on-site.

Often working in low light with torch in hand — or balanced precariously — she gathered soot, ashes, and debris from the fireplaces, along with fragments of brick, slate, glass, and a small amount of metal from abandoned cast drainpipes. These elements formed a material archive. These moments were deeply meaningful; Beverley felt privileged to spend quiet time in the building, absorbing its sounds, smells, and atmosphere, imagining past lives and future stories.

The material archive then went through a series of processing and testing stages. Some ashes and soot were washed and dried, while brick and slate were crushed into particles of varying sizes. This allowed Beverley to use the materials in multiple ways — fine dust to paint the surface, and larger particles to be wedged into porcelain before shaping.

She worked with porcelain fired at high temperatures of 1260–1280 degrees Celsius. Many of the gathered materials had lower melting points, which caused substances like brick and glass to melt during firing. To begin testing, she placed materials into small crucibles she had thrown for this purpose, and also conducted button tests — tiles with small indents filled with different materials — to observe how they reacted during high-temperature firing.

There were some exciting results. This was the first time Beverley had worked with London Brick, the yellow stock bricks made distinct by their chalk content. These bricks melted completely, losing their yellow colour and turning deep brown or black, creating a volcanic texture. The slate partially melted but retained its shape, while the soot and ashes lost their original colours and became visually similar. Due to the mixture of unknown components, some particles bled or melted into the clay and glaze, making the kiln opening a moment of surprise and delight.

Running the tile-making workshop in May gave Beverley another opportunity to see how the gathered materials reacted in the hands of others. It was a joy to support participants with materials, guidance, and encouragement as they created their own artistic interpretations of Alice Billing House. Each tile, approach, and process was unique. Some participants leaned toward literal representations; others explored more abstract responses. The variety in how materials were mixed and used — as well as the individual mark-making approaches — offered rich inspiration.

As the residency came to a close, Beverley began deeper research into the histories and stories of Alice Billing House. These narratives started to inform the direction of her work, shaping ideas, forms, and use of material. The building, she reflected, had already begun to whisper to her, revealing its hidden stories through each stage of material testing and making.

Beverley Sommerville said:

“My ongoing residency at Alice Billing House has so far been an invaluable experience in developing and nurturing my own practice. It has allowed me the time and space to focus on the ideas behind my matter collections, and it has been a great privilege and joy to have access to the building. The materials gathered from the building have been going through some processing and testing and are producing some very thrilling results.

It has also been very exciting to run the tile-making workshop, working with such an enthusiastic group and being able to share my ideas and creative process. There was so much energy and inspiration, something I will take into my own work.

The support and enthusiasm of the Grow Studios team have been fundamental in allowing me the opportunity for the Artist residency and engaging with the local community. It has allowed me to gain an understanding of how much working with others can feed and inform my own practice.

I am very excited to begin on the next stage of the project and develop the ideas, materials, and matter results into a cohesive collection of my own work, that will connect the research, history and heritage of Alice Billing House”

The final collection will be ready early next year. Watch this space.