The Great Pottery Throw Down - Festive Special and 2023 Series

More from The Great Pottery Throw Down this Christmas and in early 2023!

The Great Festive Throw Down

The Great Festive Throw Down will be broadcast on Channel 4 at Christmas Day at 7.50pm. All the normal participants plus four celebrities trying out their throwing skills on the pottery wheel. They are:

• James Fleet: actor and star of Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Vicar of Dibley and Bridgerton
• Jenny Eclair: an English comedienne, actress and presenter of Grumpy Old Women and Loose Women
• Sunetra Sarker: actress of Brookside and Ackley Bridge
• Jamie Laing: television personality who started out in Made In Chelsea

The 2023 Series of The Great Pottery Throw Down

More creative comfort watching for the winter evenings in 2023!

Keith Brymer Jones has announced on Twitter that the new series of The Great Pottery Throw Down (2023) starts Sunday 8th January at 7.45pm on Channel 4.

Last year there were 10 episodes. If it's the same this year it will finish in mid March 2034.

We've not yet seen sight of the participants - but you can expect to see:

• Keith Brymer Jones (Judge)  of Keith Brymer Jones
• Rich Miller (Judge) of Rich Miller Ceramics
• Siobhán McSweeney (Presenter) - and actress in Derry Girls

Here's a little news to make your clay...

The new series of The Great Pottery Throw Down with @Siobhni, @KBJWhitstable and @RichMillerPots starts Sunday 8th January at 7.45pm on @Channel4. #potterythrowdown pic.twitter.com/vVO1Bl8vjQ

— The Great Pottery Throw Down (@PotteryThrow) December 15, 2022

So lots of nice people, lots of throwing and potting and an absolute certainty that Keith will cry!

The Great Pottery Throw Down is back!

Judges, presenter and 12 new potters in The Great Pottery Show Down 2022

I love The Great Pottery Throw Down. It's the televisual equivalent of real comfort food on cosy evenings in winter.

The good news is that they have managed to film the fifth series in the Gladstone Pottery Museum (part of Stoke on Trent Museums), despite you know what (as 'you know what' now seems to called to avoid being "filtered" and/or "moderated")

It starts this evening (Sunday 2nd January 2022) at 7.45pm on Channel 4

Here's who's participating - 

• the Judges Keith Brymer Jones and Rich Miller are same as last year - as is the kiln technician Rose Schmits
• but they've got a new presenter - Ellie Taylor has replaced Siobhán McSweeney (who replaced who Melanie Sykes who replaced Sara Cox) and 
• 12 new potters who are for a challenge or two - and you can read about who they are and their backgrounds and experience in this article. See if you can pick a winner just from the descriptions!

The first two challenges are to throw:

• a children’s crockery set and 
• ceramic milk bottles!

As I commented in March last year

What I like about this programme

• it's a genuinely "feel-good" programme. Very Sunday evening family entertainment - of the educational and involving kind.
• It has lots of very nice people all working very hard - and collaboratively - to do the best they can. Absolutely no bitching!!
• Both Judges are very experienced and highly skilled practitioners. (see the websites of master potter Keith Brymer Jones and ceramics expert Rich Miller) I'm a big fan of this series because they take both their professional occupations and "Judging" seriously.
• Participants all vary in their experience and skill levels but virtually all have a significant level of knowledge and skill which allows them to participate in the various "make" challenges during the series.
• Every series you can see potters getting better and better as they apply themselves to the challenges (known as "going on a journey"). Soon you begin to see who are the ones who might make it all the way to the end of the series - based on their application, experience, skills and creative imagination
• The presenter was excellent light relief without having an ego which meant she tried to make the programme about her
• who went home every week got more and more difficult to predict as the series progressed - and there were some real surprises.

In the meantime for those not familiar with the series, you can 

• watch all the previous episodes in 2020 and 2021 on demand including via your via desktop
• follow the show on
• Facebook
• Twitter

Previous posts about The Great Pottery Throw Down

• Current Art Shows on Channel 4 (March 2021)
• The Great Pottery Throwdown starts tonight (January 2021)
• Third series of The Great Pottery Throw Down on Channel 4 (January 2020)
• Book Review - The Great Pottery Throw Down (March 2017)
• The Great Pottery Throwdown - Series 2 starts tonight (February 2017)

Plus my previous post about The Ceramics Gallery at the V&A.

Current Art Shows on Channel 4

This is a post reflecting on art programmes on Channel 4. Specifically:

• Grayson's Art Club
• The Great Pottery Throw Down 
• Drawers Off

Believe in yourself, Jodie. We all do. #potterythrowdown pic.twitter.com/Bc7DuGa1cX

— The Great Pottery Throw Down (@PotteryThrow) March 14, 2021

The Programmes

We would like our arts films to change the way we think about the world now. Commissioning Brief 

Channel 4 is a public service commercial broadcaster that commissions original programming and online content from independent production companies.

Interestingly Channel 4 does NOT have a category for Arts - despite its stated purpose - and despite having a commissioning brief for the Arts.

Of the programmes highlighted above:

• The first two programmes are listed among the top 20 shows on Channel 4.
• The last two are listed in the "Lifestyle" Category!

Grayson's Art Club

Grayson talks to artists, creatives, celebrities and viewers about art and lockdown

Grayson Perry has been at the heart of Channel 4's arts output for some time now - with various programmes having been made and broadcast on various topics dear to the artist.

For example - from a press release in late 2018 

For Grayson Perry being an outsider is at the heart of "Culture Wars" (w/t), which sees the acclaimed artist and broadcaster travel across the US, applying his unique artist-anthropologist’s eye to unpicking the tribal and cultural conflicts that underlie this deeply divided nation. Channel 4 announces line up of new arts programmes (November 2018)

In the last year, he has emerged, with his wife, as something of a creative saviour for all the angst and time on our hands associated with the pandemic and lockdown and staying at home and wondering what to do after baking banana bread!

Lately, this is what Channel 4 have had to say about Grayson - who's beginning to resemble a bit of a 'golden goose'

We have been looking for a popular returning arts series for the last 18 months and hope we’ve found one in the fantastic Grayson’s Art Club.

What I like about this programme

• This is absolutely the perfect programme for lockdown
• everybody outside his studio seems to participate via Zoom
• Grayson Perry has serious art credentials - but is possibly the most unpompous member of the Royal Academy of Art ever
• we all get to see the real version of an artist' studio and get to see how Grayson Perry makes his very popular artworks - and in particular his drawings and ceramic art / sculptures (although this time it's going to be cast in iron)
• It involves both television personalities used to speaking to an audience - alongside members of the public talking about their experiences and their artwork
• it displays both hidden talents (who can forget Joe Lycett's painting of Professor Chris Whitty in the first series?) and amazing creativity
• I like the fact that Philippa Perry - who is no slouch being both a psychotherapist and author of #1 bestseller "The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read" - also gets to make art and her contributions are also very interesting
  
• it combusts the notion of what is "proper art" and embraces the notion of "contemporary folk art" i.e. the art made by a community - in this case one experiencing a pandemic
• as such it's also a vehicle for story-telling and community a well as making art. 
• I'm guessing that a lot of people get comfort from the things they hear as well as see
• There's going to be an exhibition at the end of it!!

More lockdown #installation shots. Four images from 'Grayson’s Art Club', a wonderful exhibition of works selected by #artist #graysonperry, which is still waiting @mcrartgallery for the public to be allowed back in. When opened, on until October 31st. @MAGcurators @Alan_Measles pic.twitter.com/4xwqXkUM2t

— Michael Pollard (@MichaelActors) March 4, 2021

This time the themes were announced in advance and people have had the opportunity to send them in with a digital video of themselves telling the story behind 

I have no doubt this programme will be written about and archived as a way of understanding the social history of what the pandemic meant to many people.

Alan is off to the foundry today pic.twitter.com/vLNDQYThK8

— Grayson Perry (@Alan_Measles) March 16, 2021

REFERENCE

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/GraysonsArtClub 

Previous blog posts - in date order - include

• Grayson Perry's Art Club on Channel 4 (27 April 2020)
• Art On Demand during the Pandemic #1 - British TV (10th May 2020)
• Grayson Perry's Studio (12th May 2020)
• Grayson Perry Returns - on TV, at the British Museum and with a new exhibition! (September 2020)
• Grayson's Art Club : The Exhibition (and the television programme and the book of the exhibition!) (5th December 2020)
• Grayson's Art Club (Series 2) back in February (21 January 2021)

More about Grayson Perry on this blog

• 22nd September 2013 - Who's made a mark this week? - which highlights he was identified as #3 in the Top Ten most influential British artists (2011)
• Essential Listening: Democracy Has Bad Taste (15 October 2013) - about Grayson Perry's Reith Lecture
• Grayson Perry on television in 2014 (19 April 2014)
• Grayson Perry - Who Are You? - on TV and at the NPG (22 October 2014)
• Grayson Perry's Dream House - tonight on Channel 4 (17 May 2015)
• Grayson Perry vs Jonathan Jones (12 October 2016)
• What's different about the 250th Summer Exhibition curated by Grayson Perry? (11 June 2018)
• The Great Grayson Perry Lost Works Treasure Hunt (1 August 2018)

The Great Pottery Throw Down

Twelve of Britain's best home potters compete to be crowned best at the wheel

What prompted this post was the Final of Series 4 of The Great Pottery Throwdown on Sunday night.

This programme started out on BBC2 in 2015 and 2017 - and then transferred to Channel 4 - which seems to be doing rather well in picking up programmes that the BBC don't want to invest in. 

Interestingly ceramic art links this programme and Grayson Perry. 

Participants, Judges and Presenter in Series 4 of The Great Pottery Throwdown

What I like about this programme

"Drawers Off" is such a tacky title for a life drawing television programme

I missed any press briefings for a new television programme about life drawing on Channel 4. However the trailer advert did not impress me with the title of the programme.

"Drawers Off"? For goodness sake!

Turns out goodness doesn't have a lot to do with it.

It says
"Jenny Eclair hosts a life drawing class with a twist,
as amateur artists take it in turns to reveal their naked ambition and compete to win a cash prize"

It's art as entertainment art competition yet again - but this time the artist is the one who has to get naked!

The format for the programme is as follows

Five amateur artists take it in turns to disrobe and pose while the others draw him or her. The model then picks their favourite.

Which means presumably (I've not watched it yet) we've got an art programme about exhibitionist artists.  Most artists wanting to draw one another are perfectly happy to keep their clothes on!!

Once you realise that 

• the comedienne Jenny Eclair is the presenter and that 
• Diane Ali has got "the Daphne Todd role" as the "expert" 

you just know they're playing for laughs.  

Plus this is Channel 4 yet again in one of its "anything to get people to take their kit off for a TV programme" mode.  Apparently it's made by the team who make "Come Dine with me" and there's a £1,000 prize at stake each week - which explains a lot....

I suppose the pandemic means that lighthearted humour in the early evening might be in order. Personally I'd vote for The Magic Roundabout being rebroadcast!

Drawers Off started its daily run on Channel 4 yesterday (Monday March 1) - at 5.30pm - and will run for four weeks.

Of course Channel 4 have got it billed as 

Jenny Eclair takes Channel 4’s Drawers Off

Five days a week. Five artists. Five nude poses. £1000 prize.#DrawersOff with Jenny Eclair starts next Monday at 5:30pm on Channel 4! 🩲 pic.twitter.com/mzNqKuZDqR

— MultiStory Media (@MultiStoryTV) February 26, 2021

I'll watch it - but I don't expect it'll become a programme I'll want to continue watching....

Not least because Diane Ali annoys me so much with the things she says. (Reference every single programme of the BBC's Big Painting Challenge). They might at least have got a decent art teacher. 

There again, would a decent art teacher risk their reputation by having anything to do with this???

Grayson Perry's Art Club on Channel 4

I seem to be behind the curve with posting on upcoming cultural offerings in the context of the coronavirus crisis

The latest is Grayson Perry's Art Club on Channel 4 - on Channel 4 8pm on Monday 27 April.

Isolation can be a difficult and lonely time for many. We want you to be part of Grayson’s Art Club, as we ask for the amazing British public to send in the artwork you have been creating in isolation.

If you haven't got "on demand" and are currently cursing me, there are three lots of repeats for anybody who didn't catch it first time round and wants to watch and/or record. Just click the repeats link in this article about it

Please join my Art Club. I'm inviting the nation to my studio. I'll be showing you what I'm up to, talking to other artists and I want you to send me images of what you are making #C4ArtClub@Channel4 here is where you can upload your art
https://t.co/ezNwxtARV8 pic.twitter.com/scSbGeQ0I8

— Grayson Perry (@Alan_Measles) April 2, 2020

Plus this is not a one off

Every week Grayson will host the show from his studio - taking the country with him as he creates new art works. Grayson will talk to other famous artists, creatives and celebrity guests about how they are spending their time in isolation and host masterclasses to help teach us all how to create art. Never tried creating art before? Then this is your chance. Each episode will be themed with something inspired by being in isolation, such as still life or portraits. Grayson will take inspiration from the everyday little things, as he helps you unleash the artistic side you never knew you had.

The first episode is about portraiture. It's all filmed from home. Plus artworks have been sent in by the public.

In episode 2....

Grayson gets viewers to send in their artworks of animals - a beloved pet, an abstract, or an exotic animal. He's joined by Harry Hill and artist Maggi Hambli

He's been giving some interviews about this new concept of an art club on TV

• Grayson Perry interview: ‘There’s no excuse now for not doing art’ | Evening Standard
• Grayson Perry launches Channel 4 Art Club to 'battle the boredom' of lockdown | The Guardian

P.S. Apologies to those portrait artists who are waiting for me to list them as being selected for the BP Portrait Award Exhibition 2020. As always the time it takes to do this post is much longer than I think! Should be published tomorrow.