Liz Mathews at Potters Yard

Liz Mathews at Potters Yard

My books are words made physical: intimate sculptural constructs. I'm a lettering artist and studio potter; I work in clay, handmade paper and driftwood from the Thames, seeking to draw out the textures, colours, movement and meaning at the heart of each text I set, finding the words in the grain of the driftwood, the heft of the clay, the paper's light. I also make artist's films with my books. I'm best known for Thames to Dunkirk: a 17metre-long freestanding paper sculpture, it's the largest book in the British Library, an echo of the surreal event it commemorates, Dunkirk 1940.

Please describe what you intend to exhibit and any projects you wish to launch at Ink Paper + Print: I'll be showing some of my London-themed books, following the tidal flow of the Thames, including the working model for Thames to Dunkirk, and Strand of the Thames, a book that takes a walk along the river's London foreshore with Virginia Woolf, as well as Fired City, which draws on the curious way history repeats itself in the fabric of a great city, with a text by Frances Bingham from our film Riversoup. And Paper Wings, setting a cycle of love-poems by great London poet Maureen Duffy.