Johnny Vegas on swapping comedy for ceramics: ‘You’ve got to be hungry for it, and right now, I’m hungry for sculpture’

At 54, the comic has found a new lease of life by embracing his first love – pottery. He talks about agoraphobia, ADHD and creating ceramic cuddlesIn a cavernous room in an old pottery factory, Johnny Vegas is approaching his work and his face is a delight. “Is it wrong to love your own pieces?” he says, seeing his sculptures for the first time in the place they will be shown, on a table lit by beams of dusty sunlight. Called Just Be There, and made in collaboration with the sculptor Emma Rodgers, each form is the result of two people embracing around a soft clay column. The huggers are mostly from Stoke-on-Trent, where Vegas’s work in the British Ceramics Biennial, one of more than 60 artists included, is being shown. Some are collapsed – thanks to a bear hug. Some are more restrained, the clay holding the imprint of people’s feelings about personal space. They’re robust and beautiful, and Vegas looks absolutely thrilled.The first time he produced a body of work to be on public show, it was for his ceramics degree finals and it ended up accidentally being thrown in a skip. To his tutors’ dismay he insisted on making sculpture rather than the technical ceramics he was supposed to be doing, and had produced a series of abstract female forms. He adds with a laugh: “At our final show, everybody kept writing, ‘I like your candlesticks’.” Continue reading...

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