Oh my, May is upon us!
We have 13 shows this month - 10 of them in Oxford and 3 in London!
Here’s the posters for 9 of the Oxford shows (1 of them is sold out) where you can still attend, buy an advanced ticket, rock up on the night (maybe) and fall in love with some new music and make some friends! A wonderful mix of interesting, alternative musical artists from all over the globe! Some are old friends and some will become new ones!
We love the music scene, we love the Oxford music scene, listening to new music being played in different venues and enjoying the rapport with everyone who attends - we have so many regulars coming to a lot of the shows and still at every show we meet new people who might be new to town, new to Divine Schism, new to it all and everyone is welcome!
Support the scene, the venues, their staff, form a band, strike a chord, be kind to everyone you meet - see you at a show? #divineschism #livemusic #oxford #oxfordmusicscene
DON’T GET LED ASHTRAY
Hello! I will be exhibiting a selection of purposefully built ceramic garden ashtrays at The Star from Sat 4th April - the best pub garden in Oxford reopens in early April and it just got more colourful - they have a lot of tables in the garden and I have made loads of ashtrays that can be used for stubbing out your cigarettes.
Please come along and enjoy this interactive, engaging art show - you can touch the work, you can use the work, you can buy the work, you can think about the people in your life who may make use of one of these ashtrays in their own garden or outside space.
They’ll be in situ from 12 noon on Sat 4th April and on show until the end of the month - I imagine many will get stolen but that’s part of the fun perhaps! You can also buy them - there’ll be a price list at the bar!
I have been trying to think of fun exhibition titles but at the same time didn’t want to glamourise smoking! You can also certainly enjoy these ashtrays without smoke - they are hand built, coiled earthenware clay pots made to be a play on the traditional upside-down plant pot ashtrays seen in pub gardens up and down the country - they are decorated with bright underglazes, made up patterns and hand-marked sgraffito!
REMEMBER, PLEASE SMOKE OUTSIDE AND LOOK AFTER YOURSELVES AND THOSE AROUND YOU! #ceramics #oxford #ceramicsexhibition #ashtray
DRONE BOMB ME
Trophy vii (2025) black and blue earthenware pot named after the song by ‘Drone Bomb Me’ by legendary singer of hope ANOHNI @anohni
This is the seventh and last of the trophies/jugs/vases I made last year and the only one without handles.
This has some smiling, evil people on it dropping bombs on women and children whilst grabbing and running off with their dollar bills! These are all in blue slip and then with the black slip figures we have two men physically fighting whilst children cower beneath them. Below these figures are abstract shapes depicting smashed objects broken by the reverberating fighting. What a world we live in!
Look out for people and let no border be a boundary! #ceramics #ceramica #protestpot #anohni #pottery
LOOK AT THE WORLD AROUND YOU (you you you)
Trophy vi (2025) black and blue earthenware pot
I used black and blue slip on this for the first time and the blue is punchingly bright! This is the 6th of 7 trophies/jugs/vases I made last year and one of two with blue as well. One side has a yin yang face of a person and the other side has the silhouette of a woman shining with glee at the plant life around her!
‘Look at the world around you’ kind of just means keep your eyes and ears open and look at what’s around you - people, plants, living things - and then ideally when you see these living things you look after them and think about them kindly.
PEACE!
#pottery #ceramics #ceramica #aidenchina #folkart
After Belkis Ayón (2025)
This is the fifth of seven new earthenware red-figure trophies I’ve made recently and named after the incredible work of Cuban printmaker Belkis Ayón (1967-1999) - I didn’t really think about what I was marking on the clay but soon after I finished the sgraffito (scratching away at the black slip to reveal the red clay) I realised the form of the faces was very much inspired by her!
This time last year I went several times to Modern Art Oxford to see their Belkis Ayón exhibition. The thought behind her work was unreal and very allegorical - she created her own visual iconography to represent the Cuban myth of the Abakuá, a secret, all-male Afro-Cuban society and a lot of her work was centred around this and their treatment of women. Her prints were often two-tone, in black and white with striking shapes and form for their faces and bodies with a lot of subtle messaging.
The last two slides are details of her work from the exhibition.
If you ever get the chance to see her work, do it! Get inspired! #ceramics #ceramica #folkart #sgraffito #pottery
The world is fucked (2025) accompanied by the Dirty Three song Everything’s Fucked (1995)
This is the fourth of seven new earthenware pieces I’ve made this year which was exhibited recently at Ovada for Together We Make. It’s a vase showing humans and plants together in this crazy world - a main figure in the middle with a shocked facial expression, surrounded by 26 human heads with different expressions in black slip and green underglaze, 4 plants, a sun and and then the words ‘The world / is fucked’ on either side of the ‘handle’. Would you call that a handle? #ceramics #ceramica #aidenchina #earthenware #vase
Hello! Here’s me holding my new work at Ovada last night at the opening - it’s in amongst loads of great and varied work put together by the wonderful Together We Make - open 10-5 today, 10-5 tomorrow/Sunday and 11.30-8 on Monday. Jo and Charlotte have curated a great collection of art! Come thru if you can!
I’ll also be selling some smaller ceramics bits like these new sconces (wall candle holders) at Common Ground tomorrow alongside more ace artists for their art market - come along, 10-5!
This new pot says LOOK AT THE WORLD AROUND YOU you you you! Come take a closer look, just don’t grab the handles! #aidenchina #oxford #ceramics #ceramica #oxfordceramics
Humans holding each other (2025)
This is the third of seven new earthenware trophies I’ve made this year, six of which will be on display at Ovada in Oxford this weekend for Together We Make’s ace group exhibition - opening party is on Friday from 6.30pm and then we’re open Saturday 10am-5pm, Sunday 10am-5pm and Monday 11.30am-8pm
I’ve called them trophies as they were part inspired by football trophies and one of them was indeed a football trophy though don’t attempt to hold the handles as they are very fragile!
Humans holding each other - I guess it means we should just hold each other rather than kill each other and fight over things. It features children looking up to adults and someone holding a carrier bag. The blond hair was a mistake I kept in where the bright orange underglaze spilt from the inside on to the outside. So yeah, keep your mistakes in, look after each other everyone and come to the show! #ceramics #ceramica #folkart #oxford #aidenchina
How do you like your eggs? New egg cups available from tomorrow (Sat 29th Nov) at @ywmpoxford open day and art market at The Nest and also on Sun 7th Dec at @commongroundoxford art market too! Got other new work on sale too - come by, say hi, support independent artists always! #ceramics #ceramica #eggcups #aidenchina #oxford
The Shoemaker and the man (2025) - this vase is from a new collection of ‘amphora trophies’ that will be displayed on Fri 5th Dec as part of the Together We Make group exhibition at Ovada in Oxford over the first weekend in December.
This piece kick started the collection and was inspired by the Shoemaker Vase at the Ashmolean, a 5th century Athenian black-figure terracotta vase (last slide) and also a nod to my great friend Maud van den Broecke because I thought ‘“I know an amazing shoemaker who should be on a vase!”
This trophy was hand built with coils in earthenware clay, covered in black slip and then I cut away at the surface to make the shapes/ideas.
Come along on 5th Dec to see all six pieces - there’s loads of us showing work and we’re having a party! #aidenchina #ceramics #cerâmica #amphora #folkart
Hello everyone! Have you ever been to a Divine Schism show? Did you take a video or some photos or even some sound recordings? Do you still have them? If so, we’d love to be able to use it to help us with the MRes we’re working on together.
For some background info we have hooked up with the School of Arts at Oxford Brookes University and we’re working on an MA by Research under the banner: The art of community in the DIY music scene through the lens of Divine Schism!
So let’s delve into the archive!
We have a Dropbox set up and we’d love some footage or photos if possible - I guess the older the better - we’ve been running shows since 2012!
If you do send any we’d love you to be able to include the acts / date / venue to help us sort through stuff. Thanks for your time and please share far and wide! Any questions, shout! The Drop box is also in our bio! Thanks - Molly, Kate and Aiden
/scl/fo/omj86h9lvwuunu0vfdsme/ABwJFf4Czk8w6VzWvEY4zCg?rlkey=uyg9gilu90o7zah8vty9xfyvw&e=1&st=rtbdlokk&dl=0
new planter: NO KINGS // PLANT YOUR THOUGHTS (2025) stoneware clay with slip and underglaze and loads of hand marks / sgraffito of faces, crowns, dots, plants and ideas of humanity
No Kings is a great, simple phrase that highlights that the world has historically and continues to be run into the ground by men who become dictators - a simple way to stand up to authoritarianism around the world and a shout out to community! I went to New York in June and inadvertently immediately joined a No Kings protest so that inspired this pot #aidenchina #ceramics #ceramica #ceramicart #pottery #planter #folkart #underglaze #slipware #nokings
