‘On Matter and Materiality’
Frederick Dodson, Bookworks, Fatemeh Heidarhosseini, Francesca Anfossi, Six Dots Studio and Clare Flatley.
Presented by Apsara Studio
September 20th – October 4h, 2025. Apsara Studio, 200 Battersea Park Rd, SW11 4ND London
Iron Catalogue, 2025. Image courtesy of Clare Flatley.
Apsara Studio is proud to present On Matter and Materiality. Exploring interpretations and engagements with landscape through an emphasis on craft and making, ‘On Matter & Materiality’ brings together six artists and creators working with wood, metal, ceramics and oil paint. Exploring inner and outer approaches to landscape, the exhibition – coinciding with London Design Festival – thinks about the environments we create and map out in our minds. Weaving connections across form and origins of thought, ‘On Matter & Materiality’ emphasises the mediums we choose as expression, placing the heart, mind and hand at the core of their formulation.
More info soon!
Fatemeh Heidarhosseini is a painter based in London, originally from Tehran. Her practice is focused on themes such as memory, displacement, and psychological transition. Working primarily with oil on wood and linen, she employs a process-driven approach that prioritizes slowness, intuition, and material sensitivity. Her paintings often move between abstraction and figuration, using restrained gestures and a limited palette to create surfaces that evoke emotional ambiguity and spatial dislocation. The experience of migration plays a central role in her practice. The sense of rupture and disorientation inherent in displacement informs both the conceptual and formal aspects of her work. Her recent paintings explore the tension between personal and collective memory, often addressing states of uncertainty, fragmentation, and unresolved belonging. Before relocating to the United Kingdom, she participated in a number of group exhibitions in Iran. She holds an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London. She continues to develop a studio-based practice that is both introspective and research-oriented, with a growing interest in the intersections of contemporary painting, cultural identity, and emotional experience.
Frederick Dodson is an artist and craftsman working primarily in wood, drawing on a Japanese tradition of hand-tool carpentry. His practice explores the interplay between the organic and geometric, and the role of storytelling in objects and spaces. Trained in Japan, he works with the kanna, a Japanese hand plane, through which all surfaces are formed and finished — a process that shapes both mind and material. He graduated with distinction from the MA at the King’s School of Traditional Arts, where his research considered works such as the Book of Kells, early English poetry, and the butsudan, a household shrine as a site of embodied memory and ritual. Awarded the Khaled Azzam Prize, he continues to create furniture, 2D compositions, and poetry that merge sacred art, design, and daily life.
Joseph Ellwood founded Six Dots in 2020, shortly after graduating from the University of Bath with a degree in architecture. During the lockdown, Joe worked for a cabinet designer and maker, honing his skills in professional craftsmanship. Through Instagram, he began receiving his own commissions, marking the early stages of Six Dots. In September 2021, Joe began a master’s degree in architecture at the Royal College of Art, while continuing to design and create commissioned work for Six Dots, particularly built-in furniture. During a study trip to Villa André Bloc, Joe was inspired by Bloc’s playful and whimsical structures, which led him to shift his design philosophy. He realized the joy of creating objects that aren’t just problem-solvers, but pieces that satisfy the soul. With this new perspective, Joe designed and launched Six Dots’ first full collection, Contemporary Vanity. The collection debuted with a launch event and five subsequent shows, earning significant press coverage in publications such as Sight Unseen and House and Garden. In December 2022, Six Dots was named one of Wallpaper Magazine’s ‘Future Icons’ of design. While still studying, Six Dots received high-profile commissions, including a suite of furniture for the Shoreditch Arts Club. The brand also collaborated with Rimowa, designing a contemporary suitcase for their ‘As Seen By’ show. In the summer of 2023, Six Dots was commissioned by H&M and IKEA to design and manufacture a series of cups and jugs, even visiting the IKEA factory to learn about their production processes. In January 2024, Six Dots debuted at Collectible in Belgium, where the Handcraft Spacecraft table was named a “Collector’s Pick.” We also launched our retail-ready Handcraft Spacecraft collection, which is now sold globally through various retailers. In November 2024, we unveiled Not in Service, a 15-piece furniture collection that was launched with a fashion show-style runway performance. The success of the brand so far has lead to a number of high profiles clients and projects for 2025. Clients and collaborators include Maison Martin Margiela and Rimowa.
Clare Flatley is an artist working within the field of ceramics and glass. She creates sculptural compositions that reflect her interest in the behaviour of materials and her desire to express states of transformation and metamorphosis. Born in Lancashire in 1986, she studied her undergraduate degree in Sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art before moving to London to study at the Royal College of Art in Ceramics and Glass. She won several awards from her degree show work, including the CGS New Graduate Prize and the Charlotte Fraser WIP Award. More recently, she has received the a-n Bursary and has exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh for the exhibition Iron: Translating
Territories.
Francesca Anfossi’s interdisciplinary practice takes the tradition of crafts as a starting point to make and collaborate, using ceramic as a core material. Inspired by the very nature of clay — a versatile, inclusive and non-hierarchal material — her various projects are conceived in direct collaboration with communities and evolve according to their needs. Her work most often takes the form of workshops, cooking classes or communal events, and offers to the participants involved opportunities to learn new skills and form new social bonds. By putting other people’s creations and interests forward, Anfossi aims to remove the barriers between art and craft, professional and amateur, work and leisure. Rather than appropriating the objects produced by other people, she wishes to celebrate their achievement and share it with their families, friends and the broader community. Her various projects intend to create a space for experimentation and exchange, based on some of our most basic activities: cooking, playing and sharing. Anfossi is also the director of Rochester Square, a dynamic space in London dedicated to socially-engaging projects and artistic collaborations, where she recently completed the installation of temporary ceramic facilities for recreational use by artists and others.
Book Works Publishing is dedicated to commissioning and supporting new work by emerging artists. Their projects are initiated by invitation, open submission, and through guest-curated projects and include publishing, a lecture and seminar programme, exhibitions, the development of an online archive, and artists’ surgeries and workshops. Book Works Publishing’s audience is vital to their work. The process of engaging and developing our audience is initiated with our commissioning programme, and driven through all aspects of our activities, particularly our public programme of events, our workshops, artists surgeries and education activities, and through our interest in collaborating with other organisations and libraries. Our programme of commissions is diverse, and reflects our commitment not just to work with cultural workers from all backgrounds, but to invest in networks and programmes that engage, and develop and create new artistic voices.