YOU & I ARE EARTH & WATER

8 Holland Street are excited to present YOU & I ARE EARTH & WATER: CLAUDIA RANKIN, KATE SEMPLE, LAUREN DRESCHER, MOIRA FRITH. An exhibition showcasing four artists, one a painter, one a printmaker and two working in clay.

You & I Are Earth & Water brings together four artists whose practices move across ceramics, watercolour and printmaking, playful narratives, elemental forms and intimate acts of observation explore our connection to land, sea and the living beings that inhabit them. Rooted in material process yet rich with imagination, the exhibition reflects on home, ecology and the enduring dialogue between earth, water and the human hand.

At 8 Holland Street’s Bath Gallery from 12 March - 9 May 2026.

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Claudia Rankin

Claudia Rankin is a British artist based in rural Northumberland. Surrounded by ceramics from an early age, and inspired by childhood visits to the V&A Museum, she developed a lasting fascination with historical forms, colour and pattern. Working in a traditional approach, she introduces playful and unexpected narratives - often infused with animals, wit and subtle irreverence. Her pieces invite a second glance: what appears classic at first reveals humour and character up close.

Rankin works primarily in white Faience clay, using hand-building, slip-casting and press moulding. Surfaces are decorated with underglazes, oxides and occasional lustres, finished with clear glaze to intensify colour. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including in New York, Los Angeles, Amsterdam and London. She is represented by WSJ Gallery.

Created for You & I are Earth & Water , this collection reflects on the objects we choose to live with. Amidst the exciting prospect of an imminent house and studio move, Rankin reconsidered her own treasured pieces, making ceramics that bring energy and delight to domestic spaces. To have her work welcomed into a home, she says, is the greatest compliment.

Kate Semple

Kate Semple had an innate interest in form from a young age, making still Life collages and papier maché sculptures often incorporating vessels as her mother was a ceramics dealer, her home was filled with objects that would come and go. After studying art, she worked in London in editorial illustration and film, including special effects painting and puppet painting. During the pandemic, clay became her primary medium. Her motivation is to impart a sense of energy, of ideas forming like a line from a poem, within the body of her work.

Semple creates at her home, working indoors through winter to build and glaze, and firing outdoors in warmer months. With magpie tendencies, gathered papers and card are repurposed to create paper vessels on the big dining table with drawings & ideas playing out. This portable nature of working and switching between mediums suits well, she likes the transient nature.

These six pieces are slab built using Stoneware clay. Semple focuses on form first and how they may interact as a group as well as alone: playing with the shadows and silhouettes as the forms take place. She makes her own glazes and decorates using oxides, capturing washy finishes to the clay body and light brushwork suggestive of toiled earth furrows, sea spray and contours.

Lauren Drescher

Born in New York City and now living between Auckland and the French Pyrenees, Lauren Drescher works across printmaking, sculpture and artist books. Her practice adapts studio techniques for portability, allowing work to travel with her. Drawing on natural history, personal symbolism and the sentience of animals, she explores our fragile relationship with the natural world. Recycling and found objects, such as antique paper, are often a catalyst for new projects.

Swimmers is a series of drypoint and relief prints inspired by seas, rivers and lakes, seen from the intimate perspective of the swimmer. Drawing on medieval and mystical imagery, Drescher reimagines mermaids and aquatic beings as autonomous, elemental forces. The works celebrate female agency while acknowledging ecological fragility, with reclaimed papers reinforcing her environmental concerns.

Moira Frith

Moira Frith makes watercolour paintings on paper of botanicals, beasts, birds, costumes, castles - anything that catches her imagination. With a professional background in conservation and ecology, she turns to painting to express aspects of nature that elude scientific language. For Moira, painting acts as a way of slowing down and paying attention to this, allowing her to explore where she finds the beauty in things, in a more spiritual sense. Watercolour offers immediacy and responsiveness, Frith loves how the paper responds - warping, absorbing, shifting - so that the surface feels alive.

For five years, Frith has made small, postcard-sized watercolours on kraft paper. This modest, repeatable format acts as an anchor within her practice. Spanning 2021–2026, the works in this exhibition trace a period of personal change, with the act of painting serving as a steady, grounding ritual of observation and quiet reflection.