Intersections: Craig Underhill and Kate Wickham is on view at Kellie Miller Arts Gallery, Brighton
June 27 – August 17, 2026
KMA Gallery in Brighton, UK, presents the exhibition Intersections from 27 June to 17 August 2026, featuring ceramicist Craig Underhill and painter Kate Wickham. Combining two artists united in their individual ethos to dissect the landscape in a variety of ways, the exhibition serves as a reminder of how our paths can diverge, cross, and reunite over time.
Gallery owner and curator Kellie Miller has leaned into the perspectives they each offer, situating their works to create conversations about place and space. Craig’s Deep Migration, a striking work with an enticing ombre blue glaze and distinct directed black outcroppings, points toward Harbour’s Edge by Kate, inviting the audience to consider where and how we have landed in our place. Millions of years of collective migration have marked the land as Craig has marked his vessels, leaving traces in the ground, on paper maps, in photographs and now through recorded digital journeys, all of which Kate recalls in her compositions.
Some of Kellie’s combinations invite quieter reflection. Kate’s Field Mapping, a lush green painting with delicate cross-hatching recalls a sea of tended fields viewed from above, as if suspended from the clouds. Sitting in partnership with Craig’s Morning Still, where the order of the land is clearly demarcated through raised slabs and blocks of colour, Kellie suggests our influence on the earth can be the source of our meditative connection to it just as much as the earth itself.
Craig’s ceramics take a painterly approach to the medium, creating richly layered surfaces that emulate the sensory experience of being amongst the land. With a huge international following for his slab-built vessels, his pieces embrace the Cornish art movement, celebrated for its depiction of the unique light and dramatic coastlines of Cornwall. Having relocated to the area in 2020 in order to be closer to the source of his inspiration, Craig’s vision of the landscape has become increasingly more tactile, incorporating stronger mark-making and even sand into his pieces. In his quest to celebrate this vaunted landscape, he creates three dimensional vessels that are akin to Cornish artist Ben Nicholson’s abstract paintings.
Ceramics that harken back to a place and a land so deeply as these required another artist who was equally as drawn to the memory and representation of place. Who better than Kate, a celebrated ceramicist turned painter who was once Craig’s tutor 36 years ago at Portsmouth Polytechnic. Kate is inspired by the land’s topography, from its architecture to aerial photography. Thus each of her paintings is an invitation to consider a place from as many angles as possible in order to truly see. Kellie invited her to expand the scale of her work for Intersections, so the exhibition features the largest works she has ever made.
For Intersections, Craig has also produced the largest work he has ever made, the 51cm (20in) tall Estuary Walk. The textured finish across the tall slabs feels like a misty summer morning by the coast, with pops of blue sky visible as the sun blazes through the foggy clouds rising from the sea. Sitting on solid, stone-like posts sinking into a soft blue finish, glazed as if to emulate the rippling water, the freshness of a cool, early walk before the heat of a summer’s day resonates across the ceramic surface.
Other works seem to reflect on the history of the place, drawing on millennia of human engagement with the land. With hardly a space untouched by people, the island of Great Britain is marked by thousands of villages and communities that have come and gone over centuries. Some interventions are obvious, such as the oft-stumbled-upon stone walls depicted in Ancient Boundary, which delineate everything from farmland to kingdoms. Others are more atmospheric, such as Lost Numbers II, which feels both ancient and futuristic at once, like an artefact of a people who once inhabited a place and will again.
The variety of diverging and converging paths presented through Intersections, both literal and metaphorical, prompts a reconsideration of our role in shaping not only the land but also the communities that populate it. Celebrating ceramics as an important vehicle in creative storytelling alongside painting, sculpture and textile, KMA Gallery continues to present works at the forefront of contemporary art.
Craig Underhill was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and now lives and works in Cornwall. He has a BA in Fine Arts with a specialisation in ceramics from Portsmouth Polytechnic. His ceramic practice explores place, history, landscape and memory. Rather than referencing specific locations directly, his works evoke the experience of moving through and engaging with the landscape, suggesting fragments of memory, atmosphere and place. He has exhibited across the UK and Europe, and his work is held in private collections in the UK, the US, Singapore, Canada, Germany, Switzerland and more.
Kate Wickham was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, and now splits her time between East Sussex, UK and France. Originally a ceramicist, she trained at Camberwell School of Art and then completed an MA at the Royal College of Art. Her ceramic work is in a number of public and private collections in the UK and abroad. Around 2010, Wickham switched from ceramics to painting, which she felt was a natural progression, as her ceramic work had always been very painterly. Exploring landscape through abstraction, particularly in areas where she has a personal affinity for the landscape, her paintings are highly sought after and held in private collections in the UK, Europe and the US.
Kellie Miller was born in London and lives and works in Brighton, UK. An international artist, curator, critic, gallery owner and entrepreneur, she holds a first degree in arts from the University of Brighton and an MA in Arts Criticism from City University, London. Having spent a period of her career focused on ceramics, her artworks, sculptures and paintings have been exhibited widely across the UK and Europe, with works held in the collections of the Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taiwan; Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Japan; and Brighton and Hove Museum, UK, as well as in many private collections across the globe. In 2013, she embarked on a pop-up gallery project representing eight artists. After the project, realising she had a talent for curating and selecting artworks, she secured the space and developed the award-winning Kellie Miller Arts Gallery (KMA).
Contact
gallery@kelliemillerarts.com
Kellie Miller Arts Gallery
3 Church Street
Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 1UJ
United Kingdom
Captions
- Craig Underhill, Ancient Boundary, 2026, ceramic, 29x17x10 cm. Courtesy of Kellie Miller Arts Gallery
- Craig Underhill, April Flow, 2026, ceramic, 19x12x11 cm. Courtesy of Kellie Miller Arts Gallery
- Craig Underhill, April to May, 2026, ceramic, 23x30x14 cm. Courtesy of Kellie Miller Arts Gallery
- Craig Underhill, Deep Migration, 2026, ceramic, 39x29x14 cm. Courtesy of Kellie Miller Arts Gallery
- Craig Underhill, Estuary Posts, 2026, ceramic, 21x30x14 cm. Courtesy of Kellie Miller Arts Gallery
- Craig Underhill, Estuary Walk, 2026, ceramic, 51x38x20 cm. Courtesy of Kellie Miller Arts Gallery
- Craig Underhill, Ground Map, 2026, ceramic, 18x21x9 cm. Courtesy of Kellie Miller Arts Gallery
- Craig Underhill, Landscape with 2, 2026, ceramic, 20x9x5 cm. Courtesy of Kellie Miller Arts Gallery
- Craig Underhill, Lost Circles, 2026, ceramic, 12x17x8 cm. Courtesy of Kellie Miller Arts Gallery
- Craig Underhill, Lost Numbers II, 2026, ceramic, 27x18x10 cm. Courtesy of Kellie Miller Arts Gallery
- Craig Underhill, Morning Still, 2026, ceramic, 38x31x15 cm. Courtesy of Kellie Miller Arts Gallery
- Craig Underhill, October Pink, 2026, ceramic, 16x11x10 cm. Courtesy of Kellie Miller Arts Gallery
- Kate Wickham, Field Mapping, 2026, mixed media on board, 78×65 cm. Courtesy of Kellie Miller Arts Gallery
- Kate Wickham, Harbour’s Edge, 2025, mixed media on board, 53×53 cm. Courtesy of Kellie Miller Arts Gallery
