Kidsgrove Library Mosaic - Kidsgrove, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.
N 53° 05.175 W 002° 14.492
30U E 550799 N 5882134
A mosaic on the wall of the library in Kidsgrove.
Waymark Code: WMV3Y3
Location: West Midlands, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 02/19/2017
Views: 6
The mosaic is series of individual tile paintings created by Phil Hardaker working with students from Maryhill Academy, Kings Academy School, three primary schools, Kidsgrove rotary club and members of the council.
The mosaic is a memorial to commemorate World War 1 and is mounted on the wall of Kidsgrove Library.
The tile painted by Councillor Burgess is on the right hand side near the top and its of a smiling soldier pointing a finger to indicate “Your Country needs you.” She has dedicated it to her Uncle Fred who lied about his age to join up and was killed in action. (
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The opening for the Kidsgrove library WWI memorial. (
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Philip Hardaker is a - Sculptor, Ceramicist and Moasic Artist
Arts Consultant for Community, Education and Public Arts
Philip Hardaker was born in Harrogate, North Yorshire in 1954. He attended Harrogate College of Art in 1975 then went on to North Staffordshire Polytechnic to gain a first class honours degree in Fine Art Sculpture. He moved to London in 1977 when he attended the Royal College of Art and gained an M. A in Fine Art Ceramics in 1980. His lecturers included Eduardo Paolozzi, Peter Blake and Lord Queensbury.
Philip moved to Somerset in 1980, renting a studio in Bruton from Dutch painter Henk Huffener.
Since 1985 he has lived in a seventeenth century packhorse inn on the outskirts of Stoke on Trent, working as a sculptor mainly in the public sector and undertaking many educational projects and private commissions.
Hardaker is an accumulator, a shifter of detritus collecting the flotsam and jetsom of our wasteful consumer society and transforming these materials into art. He represents his work as archeological sculptural paintings made from clay and found objects. For thirty years he has been digging up ancient and modern ceramic shards from Staffordshire and around the world. He employs these fragments of past ages along with his own modelled and cast ceramic elements of heads, animals and aeroplanes in ceramic collages of considerable intricacy and beauty. Hardaker's work has political and ecological objectives and concerns in communicating comment on historical events. The work is also intrinsically linked with being English and celebrating the past production of Staffordshire ceramics and creativity.
The philosophy, ideas and messages behind the work capture the age we live in with both serious intent and irony and a strong sense of humour. Source: (
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