Ho LAI is a ceramic artist from Hong Kong, currently based in London. Her work explores the contemporary nature of ceramics, experimenting with the materials and processes involved in its creation. In 2016, she graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, attaining a Bachelor of Art in Visual Arts and was awarded the AVA Keeper of Studies Collection Award. In 2019 Lai graduated from the Royal College of Art, attained MA in Ceramics & Glass and was awarded The Grocer’s Hall Scholarship.
Upon graduation, she was shortlisted as one of the FRESH exhibition emerging artists at the British Ceramics Biennial. In 2021, she was shortlisted as the British Ceramics Biennial AWARD exhibition headline artist and was commissioned to create a wall installation named ‘Fluxing Red’, exhibited in Stoke-on-Trent, the ceramics capital in the UK.
She was also shortlisted for the European Prize for Applied Arts and the XVII International Contemporary Ceramics Award in the same year. Her works are exhibited widely in the United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium, and Hong Kong. She is currently continuing her artistic practice at her studio in southeast London.
Smells Like Lavender - the Thought by Ho LAI
Consistent with Ho LAI’s experimental approach to clay and glazes, this group of her old and new pieces of artwork showcased the result of material experimentations and colour combinations.
The new series of works titled ‘Smells Like Lavender’ reflects the memory of Ho strolling and wandering in the British lavender field - not long after embracing the life of the new normal. Through recalling being overwhelmed by the aroma of the flora, Ho started this series of artworks to express the sensory experience through visual representation.
“I find poetics in the transformation of material through working in the approach both subversive and experimental. Through colour combinations and material experimentation, I intended to capture the dissolving quality of clay and glaze through firing.”
