IT’S JUST A FEELING
Simon Bayliss
 
Private View : Friday 8 May,  6-8pm, all welcome.
Open : Saturday 9-30 May, Friday and Saturday, 11-4pm
In conversation : Saturday 9th May, 2-3pm, Gwennap Pit, Redruth.


Simon Bayliss (b. 1984) is a potter and artist based in St Ives, Cornwall.
 
Bayliss was invited by Dr Peder Clark, a cultural and social historian, to develop work in response to his research on Ecstasy (MDMA). As a potter with a background in dance music, Bayliss has often drawn on the aesthetics of rave culture in previous projects. For the commission, he was given access to Clark’s archival and oral history materials on 1990s Ecstasy consumption, spanning rave scenes and alternative communities, including writing on gender expression within club culture, psychedelic rave art, and harm reduction campaigns.
 
The resulting exhibition brings together slipware ceramics, music video, and print, playfully reprocessing this material through the circular logic of the pottery studio. Moving between archive and painterly expression, the works explore subcultural appropriation, emotional communities, and the material culture of Ecstasy. Throughout, Bayliss’s ongoing preoccupation with studio pottery traditions provides an unlikely framework, where intoxication, craft practice, and youthful autobiography blur.
 
It’s Just a Feeling takes its title from a track by Terrorize, released in 1992 on Hamster Records. The project has been generously supported by Dr Peder Clark’s Wellcome Humanities and Social Science Fellowship, and a residency at Cove Park, Scotland, in partnership with Creative Kernow Associates.

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In conversation – Simon Bayliss & Dr Peder Clark, hosted by Senara Wilson
2-3pm, Saturday 9th May, Gwennap Pit, Busveal, Redruth TR16 5HH
 
Artist Simon Bayliss and cultural and social historian Dr Peder Clark will be joined by filmmaker Senara Wilson to discuss the unlikely convergence of Ecstasy and studio pottery. 
 
Bayliss will reflect on his response to Clark’s research into Ecstasy (MDMA), developed for his current exhibition It’s Just a Feeling at Auction House, and through a residency at Cove Park. Clark will speak about his research and writing on 1990s Ecstasy consumption, spanning rave scenes and alternative communities.

Limited tickets available, book here