News — animal sculptures

Best Friends Exhibition

1 November - 31 December 2025

What is a best friend? 

Someone or something you can rely on? We invited 8 artists to respond to the brief and the outcomes are wide ranging and engaging with wit, delight, enchantment and sentiment.

We are pleased to say that charm and joy pervade the exhibition - which is exactly its intent. You can discover not only cats and dogs but also horses, donkeys, birds, an anteater, an okapi and many more. Each sculpture is beautifully crafted in form and material.

All the exhibits are for immediate sale, but be aware that we sell from the wall, so hurry.

Ceramicist Helen Higgins

Helen Higgins is a prize winning ceramicist, nationally renowned for her humorous ceramics. Her pieces are individually hand built employing slab, coil, pinch and modelling techniques, to create her characters. She loves dressing her animals up in costumes - creating animal hybrids with anthropomorphic vibes. 

“I endeavour to explore how we sometimes try to hide our true selves behind a façade, masking our own vulnerabilities by pretending or taking on other characteristics, with the intention of increasing self-esteem and confidence."

Her busy studio and teaching practice is based in south Wales.

Figurative Ceramicist Jean Tolkovosky

Surrey based ceramicist Jean Tolkovsky, is a nationally renowned sculptor specialising in figurative work. Her sculptures are each unique pieces inspired by myths, novels and childhood memories. The dream-like quality of her work is achieved not only in the form, but also in the sensitive rendering of the glazes and mark making.

Jean's masked and anthropomorphic figures reveal a fascination and intrigue to the multiple facets of the human persona.  Her aim is to suggest the narrative, whilst leaving a space for further contemplation by the viewer.

Jean Tolkovsky's sculptures are collected around the world.

Mixed-Media Artist Gemma Rees 

Gemma Rees is a Sussex based artist specialising in creating highly textured canine sculptures.

After a career as a professional graphic designer, she experimented with 3D materials and from there her passion for making animal sculptures grew. Her specialism is dogs and how their quirky characters evolve through the process of doing a drawing, making a wire armature and then working with paper clay and resin to create the surface. Some sculptures are very labour intensive, taking weeks to build. Her aim is not to shape a realistic canine, but instead interpret its personality through the materials and gestural form.

Wildlife Ceramicist Elaine Peto

Elaine Peto has spent a lifetime being inspired by the natural world. From her studio in Hampshire she studies animal behaviour, their forms and characteristics. Elaine's portfolio includes ceramic sculptures of farm and wild animals and even sea creatures. She specialises in creating one-off pieces using textured stoneware and porcelain clay.

“ My aim is to capture the essence of the beast”

Animal Ceramicist Joanne Cooke

Yorkshire based, Joanne Cooke has spent the last 25 years sharing her love of animals by creating life-like ceramic sculptures. Her primary fascination is with dogs and their captivating characters and playful natures. Each pose and facial expression is carefully worked in clay until it conveys the essence of the animal.

Joanne individually sculpts each dog out of stoneware clay, then decorates them with a combination of matt underglaze and shiny top glaze.

Ceramicist Emma Rowley

Yorkshire based ceramicist, Emily Rowley, creates charming sculptures that aim to make you smile. Through building the form in stoneware clay she imbues character by the application of textures and pattern. Each piece is a delightful statement that brings humour and cheer.

"The ceramics I make, through pattern and personality, evoke feelings of nostalgia and cosiness. They comfort you like an old friend coming round for a cuppa".

Ceramicist Christy Keeney

Internationally renowned sculptor, Christy Keeney, studied ceramics at the Royal College of Art in London. After spending 17 years in London, Christy returned to his native Donegal where he now lives and works with his family.

His sculptures have a strong narrative quality that invites you to contemplate the story behind the work.  He sculpts and draws into slabs of wet clay creating heads and disjointed figures that investigate the human condition.

His forms often extend to the point where sculpture and drawing meld.  He uses washes of colour to denote mood and atmosphere, whilst sometimes opting for a monochromatic palette to heighten the form's impact.

Miniaturist Ceramicist Andrew Bull

Kent based sculptor Andrew Bull specialises in making quirky porcelain miniatures. His light-hearted approach captures the essence of humour in everyday situations: whether walking the dog or hanging out the washing. Each animated character tells a story that engages and delights. For Andrew, a best friend doesn't have to be an animal or person, it can also be a car or a bag of golf clubs - always there when you need it!

Andrew uses rolled and slab building techniques to carefully create each sculpture by hand, adding lustres and enamels to highlight key accents.

Elaine Peto has spent a lifetime being inspired by the natural world. From her studio in Hampshire she studies animal behaviour, their forms and characteristics. Elaine's current portfolio includes ceramic sculptures of farm and wild animals and even sea creatures. She specialises in creating one-off pieces using textured stoneware and porcelain clay.

“My aim is to capture the essence of the beast”

At Exeter College of Art & Design, Elaine studied animals through research visits to livestock markets and abattoirs, using the media of photography and drawing to record the structure of the carcass. After graduating in 1985, she continued her studies of agricultural animals, setting up her own studio in 1986.

There is a softness about Elaine's sculptures, that despite the hard ceramic form, she manages to create a flesh/skin like quality with the employment of various scratching techniques and impressing textured textiles into the soft clay. This creates a highly tactile surface that demands to be touched. Her use of multiple glazes adds a further dimension that enhances and attracts.

Elaine makes each animal as an individual, determined to suggest character with her enigmatic styling processes. Each creature is made by building the form using clay slabs: rolling out a sheet of clay and forming the body, then gradually adding slab by slab to form the whole animal. The details are then remodelled until the animal is complete. The animal is biscuit fired, glazed and re-fired to stoneware.

We are delighted to showcase the work of this accomplished sculptor at Utopia.

Spring fever has transformed the gallery into a hilarious menagerie of black metal animals all vying for attention. Mick Kirkby Geddes is the gallery's guest artist for May...

>> Click to view & buy here in our online shop <<

Mick is a Yorkshire man. He was born in Sheffield, but now lives with his family in the Pennines. After finishing a Fine Art Degree at Leeds Polytechnic in 1988, he set out to work as a sculptor and metalsmith, combining his passion for 1970s comics and a love of metal. It all started at university when his materials budget ran out. Unfazed he went looking for scrap.

Mick now has a workshop full of discarded junk. He hates waste and spends his days sorting, cutting and welding the scrap together with new steel to create innovative and quirky sculptures. Some of the pieces he galvanises, then powder coats so that they can go outside. Mick also loves to manipulate scale with sizes ranging from a few centimetres up to several meters. He welcomes commissions.

His Animal Crackers exhibition runs until the end of May and has been warmly received by visitors to the gallery. Collectors have arrived from all over the world including Australia, where one of his cheeky little dogs now resides.

So don't miss out! Check out his work >>Here in our online shop>> or pop in and take a look, we'd love to see you. Read more about Yorkshire artist Mick Kirkby-Geddes.

2024 is a very exciting year for Utopia.

Not only are we celebrating 10 years of utopian living but we also plan to expand this year to bigger, more central premises in the town. 

Mick's retirement from making lighting means that we now have more room for art. So 2024 sees the start of our new venture. Each month we will have a guest artist who has been specially selected to exhibit at Utopia. I'm choosing artists that each have a clear narrative, make beautiful work and have a philosophy which dovetails into our own. Expect stunning sculpture and work that you can connect with.  Each artist will have something different to offer and not everyone will like them all, but that's the beauty of art. The exhibitions will last around 4 weeks. We hope that you are as excited about this new dimension to Utopia as we are.

We start the programme on 25 March - here are the first two artists we're showing, so do make a note in your diary. All the work is for immediate sale as always, which we know is very popular with you. And all the artists accept commissions, but note each piece is unique.

Best wishes,

Jac

We are delighted to welcome David Cooke and Mick Kirkby-Geddes to our unexpected fold of exceptional artists.

Fur & Feathers

The Extraordinary Ceramics of David Cooke

25 March - 24 April 2024

Prize winning nationally renowned wildlife sculptor, David Cooke, has been studying animals all his life. He draws from his childhood in East Anglia and his current home in Yorkshire, to create sculptures that are as individual as the subjects he studies. Whilst always experimenting with new materials and techniques, Cooke particularly enjoys the challenge of ceramics and bronze.

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Animal Crackers

The Playful Sculpture of Mick Kirkby-Geddes

5 May - 1 June

Mick Kirkby-Geddes's metal sculpture is incredible. From his workshop in the Yorkshire Pennines he transforms the old into something new with a fresh engaging dynamic. Curiosity and a healthy dose of 1970’s kids tv and comics informs his often humorous pieces and brings them to life.

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