How Pottery Throwdown is a better programme than Artist of the Year

There have been a number of television programmes over the years about creating/making things in a competitive context and I've commented on a lot of them (see my Art on Television page)

I've been writing reviews of the Portrait and Lansdscape Artist of the Year series (and others) since 2018 and I've been watching The Great Pottery Throwdown since it started - but never reviewed it.

However this year, I feel prompted to say why I think Pottery Throwdown is a better programme

This is in the context of the multiple criticisms over the years of PAOTY and LAOTY, many of which are shared by viewers.

The Love Productions pic for The Great Pottery Throwdown

So here goes

CORRECTION: Landscape Artist of the Year 2025

Recently I received an enquiry from somebody in Canada who was trying to read through all my blog posts about Landscape Artist of the Year which was broadcast earlier this year.

I’m having a problem with the LAOTY 2025 episode reviews, as the links don’t seem to be working. All the review links just go back to episode number one. Hoping you can do a fix? I enjoy reading your reviews after watching the episodes. I’m starting to despair about the judges, and appreciate your reasonable critiques!

Ben McGregor with his Commission Painting

Yesterday I sat down and fixed them all - on all the posts. 

I've tracked all the correct links down and reinserted them in the post about the Final https://makingamark.blogspot.com/2025/03/ben-macgregor-wins-landscape-artist-of-year-2025.html - and republished it

So here is the full set of links to episodes and my posts about LAOTY 2025 

• Review: Episode 1 of Landscape Artist of the Year Series 10 (2025) - Hampton Court
• Review: Episode 2 of Landscape Artist of the Year Series 10 (2025) - Snowdon, Wales
• Review: Episode 3 of Landscape Artist of the Year Series 10 (2025) - Clifton Suspension Bridge
• Review: Episode 4 of Landscape Artist of the Year (Series 10) - St Pancras Basin
• Review: Episode 5 Landscape Artist of the Year 2025 - Dinorwic Slate Quarry
• Review: Episode 6 of Landscape Artist of the Year (Series 10) - Bristol Harbourside
• Review: Landscape Artist of the Year 2025 - Semi Finals at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard 
• Ben MacGregor wins Landscape Artist of the Year 2025
• Review: £10,000 Commission for Landscape Artist of the Year 2025

Plus 

• LAOTY 2025: Meet the Heat Winners and Wildcard Winners PLUS View the Commission Painting!

Here's the video of Ben MacGregor with his commission at the Courtauld

Not quite sure how the mishap with the links happened - but it did - and it certainly explains why these posts got rather less readers than users. I always include the links at the end to help read through the previous ones! Hence this correction!

Review: Episode 6 of Landscape Artist of the Year (Series 10) - Bristol Harbourside

The heats - as per the running order of episodes Landscape Artist of the Year 2025 - finished with a cold and wet one - right next to some cold wet water at Bristol Harbourside.

Pods on the edge of Bristol Harbourside

Comments included below are by people who follow me on Facebook - unless indicated to be by an artist, wildcard or Judge.

Episode 6: Bristol Harbourside

This review - of Episode 6 of Series 10 of Landscape Artist of the Year - follows the same format of my other reviews and considers.

• the location and weather
• the artists' profiles
• themes arising during the episode
• who was shortlisted and who won

The programme is available to view on Sky Arts on Sky/Freeview/NowTV.

NOTE: This might be Episode 6 but it was actually Heat 2 and was filmed on Wednesday 12 June 2024 in Bristol (which rather suggests that the Suspension Bridge was Heat 1). I think they decide the running order of Heats - as Episodes - after they have filmed and know the outcomes. That and the fact that the two heats in the same area are never consecutive on the screens. Anybody care to divulge the actual filming date of their heat?

Location and Weather

The location was Bristol Harbourside

A side on perspective of Bristol Harbourside

I kept trying to work out where the pods are - because this programme has this unhappy habit of sending cameramen to film the view from locations where the pods are NOT located! Plus we had lots of top down views - none of which contained either pods or wildcards (presumably done in advance)!

Review: Episode 5 Landscape Artist of the Year 2025 - Dinorwic Slate Quarry

We were back in the Welsh countryside this week - but with an industrial angle!

I don't think the view selected for Heat 5 of Landscape Artist of the Year 2025 could be called "attractive: . More like a manmade scar on the countryside....

LAOTY 2025: Heat 5 - artists lined up to hear the results of the shortlisting

Episode 5: Dinorwic Quarry

This review - of Episode 5 of Series 10 of Landscape Artist of the Year - follows the same format of my other reviews and considers.

• the location and weather
• the artists' profiles
• themes arising during the episode
• who was shortlisted and who won

The programme is available to view on Sky Arts on Sky/Freeview/NowTV.

Location and Weather

The view of the Dinorwic Slate Quarry from the pods
the vertical slate seam to the left and the slag tips to the right

The location was the old Dinorwic Slate Quarry located between the villages of Llanberis and Dinorwig (formerly Dinorwic) in North Wales.

The two largest slate quarries in the world at the beginning of the 20th century were both located in North Wales. Penrhyn was the largest (which is the one I know) and this one was the second largest. It opened in 1787; at its height of production it employed 3,000 people and it closed down in 1969 and became the site of The Slate Museum.

The artists had a view of an imposing and monumental view of the vein of slate, which is very nearly vertical and hence there is a very vertical quarry. Vegetation is growing again on the hillside. To the right was more of the quarry and the slag heaps.

An actual landscape and a nice, meaty challenging one at that!

Interestingly the pods were split into two rows of four - either side of the vertical scar - and I'm guessing that was to allow the wildcards to see it too.

The split pods - with wildcards behind.
Is this going to be repeated in future?

Tai thought it was quite ugly and very difficult to do. He highlighted how the scar in the hillside goes in so that the shadows will be constantly changing on a sunny day - as it was.

Another comments was that the hillside was scarred and those scars had been inflicted by humans

I found it unattractive and also very difficult to make look interesting as most of the day it was all one tone. It seemed to me the only way to make it look interesting would be via mark-making or exaggeration.

The heat was filmed on a very hot dry day in June 2024.  People were using their umbrellas and protective tents to shield themselves from the sun!

"It's very hot so it's going to be a challenge!"

 

The Artists in the Pods

Review: Episode 4 of Landscape Artist of the Year (Series 10) - St Pancras Basin

This, for me, was a rather unsatisfactory episode of Landscape Artist of the Year from the viewers perspective. Mainly because it  

• was totally confusing as to what the view was
• provided different artists with different views
• kept giving us top down or high up perspectives on the place
• nearly all the artists seemed to be very "hemmed in"
• overall, it made for a disappointing episode

Shortlising announcement in Gasholder Park 
at St Pancras Basin in North London

....and I haven't even got started YET it being another URBAN cityscape! 

Can the production team and the Judges not bear to drag themselves away from London? Is this a cost-cutting exercise?

I’m thinking that my chances of getting into the competition would be better if my submission painting showed the bleakest urban landscape possible!

 

Episode 4: St Pancras Basin

This review - of Episode 4 of Series 10 of Landscape Artist of the Year - follows the same format of my other reviews and considers.

• the location and weather
• the artists' profiles
• themes arising during the episode
• who was shortlisted and who won

The programme is available to view on Sky Arts on Sky/Freeview/NowTV.

Location and Weather

The view was all over the place - as were the pods.

The location was St Pancras Basin - just north of  St Pancras Station. 

• You can find it here on Google Maps. 
• It was originally built by the Midland Railway in 1869 with the aim of loading load canal barges with the coal brought by the railway, mainly from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. It fell into disuse after the coal drops were dismantled.
• Regeneration started - or rather had some false starts - in the 1980 and 1990s
• The 1996 decision to move the Channel Tunnel Rail Link from Waterloo to St Pancras became a major catalyst for change as part of what became a grand plan to redevelop all the old industrial land behind the two stations of Kings Cross and St. Pancras. The results have been very impressive across a number of metrics

Top down view of most of the site that provided views for the artists

This is a competition which requires eight pods lined up in front of a view - with space for the wildcards and for the production team to work

This site has very limited space and the area is completely hemmed in by:

• The Regents Canal - and St Pancras Basin full of barges
• The high level railway lines coming in and out of  St Pancras International Station
• the gasholders - rebuilt on the north side of the site as a result of the changes made at St Pancras station for the Eurostar.
• the new flats built on what was a brownfield site
• the new centre built at Coaldrop Yard

As a result, the eight pods were not all together. Six were on a spot close to the railway bridge over the canal and two more were further away on a piece of grass, next to a tree. Except they looked like three to me so even more confusing....

I found the whole location gobsmackingly complicated and confusing. I couldn't make sense of where anyone was and what views they had to look at and paint. The split-site pods may explain that last bit! Thanks for pointing it out.

The Split of the Pods
six to the left near the bridge over the canal; two to the right on the grass

I don't think I've ever seen all the pods split up in this way before

However the weather seemed to be sunny and hot with some cloud - at least judging by the attire of some of the pod artists......

The Artists in the Pods

Episode 4 pod artists are listed and profiled BELOW in the alphabetical order of their surnames; including:

• a synopsis of their background
• Links to their websites (if they have one) are embedded in their names.
• Social media platforms are also referenced

Review: Landscape Artist of the Year 2024 - The £10,000 Sustainable Orkney Commission

This review of the £10,000 commission won by the winner of Landscape Artist of the Year is always a really odd review to write.  This post is about why - and includes:

• the £10,000 Commission
• the challenge of the Landscape Artist of the Year commission
• the Commission Programme
• the Commission Painting produced by the winner of Landscape Artist of the Year 2023.
• how you can see it at the Science Museum.

There are two main aspects to the review

• the programme
• the commission artwork

I know all I'm doing is looking to see whether, to me, it looks like an artwork worth £10,000 - and hence the client has not been diddled.

In this instance Monica very clearly demonstrated in her commission painting produced for the Final - of her neighbourhood where she lives - that she's clearly capable of a lot more than the small paintings she was producing in just 4 hours (for the heat, semi-finals and final).

The £10,000 Commission

First - a quick preliminary - about the Commission

The £10,000 Commission is, of course, the Prize for winning Landscape Artist of the Year 2024.  (See my blog post for my review of the Final - Monica Popham wins Landscape Artist of the Year 2024)

The Client for the Commission is the Science Museum.

The Science Museum in Exhibition Road in South Kensington.

The 2024 Landscape Artist of the Year prize was a commission by the Science Museum Group to capture the story of Orkney's central role in the UK's transition to low-carbon, renewable energy.

Does the client get the artwork irrespective of what sort of artwork the winning artist turns out? I thought there must be something in the rules somewhere which indicates "best efforts" etc. But instead I found this

If the Winner rejects the Winner’s Prize or otherwise fails to carry out the creation of the Winner’s Prize Artwork on such dates and times and locations required by the Producer, then the Producer reserves the right to take the Winner’s Prize away from the Winner and the Producer shall be entitled to select another Winner.  

The Challenge of the Commission

I've always thought that the commission is typically a prestigious view for a prestigious client. In other words it:

• brings a very worthwhile prize pot 
• alongside something which is a difficult challenge to confront and address. 

Plus you might get to go to an interesting place.