Down a ginnel, behind a high fence on a terraced street in Sheffield, sits a garden shed.

Like many garden sheds, it’s full of tools. But in Ben’s shed, these are wheels, clay knives, loops and sponges. Surfaces are smudged with the dried residues of clay used to make the ceramics that line the high shelves.⁠

Recognisable for their scored surfaces, glazed and fired in rich blues and etched with haiku, Ben Hall’s vessels are containers for stories, observations and small moments of everyday life.⁠

Ben’s poems celebrate the quirks, rituals and oddities that quietly shape our lives: a misspelled word, the local pidgeon, a forgotten shopping list, the idiosyncratic behaviours of folk that might otherwise go by unnoticed. With warmth, humour and curiosity, he captures something of what it feels like to be here, now.

The exhibition provided a glimpse into the place where these poems and pots begin, and leads us down a path to the unique traces we leave behind.

Commissioned / presented at the National Festival of Making in partnership with Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery.