Utopia bricks is a sporadic batch production of brickworks, exploring relationship of clay to the Midlands and wider industrial history of brick making. Utopia bricks was a contemporary interpretation of the Utopia brick made by the Aldridge Brick and Tile company near Walsall, the firm closed in 1965, taken over by the Ibstock brick company who are still on the same site. The clay for this project was donated by Ibstock and made possible by the New Art Gallery Walsall curator, Zoë Lippett. Through a number of workshops around 300 bricks were made which went on to brick up the door into gallery 2 at Eastside Projects as part of Jerwood 3-phase exhibition.
Mark Essen (b. Reigate, UK) graduated with a BA in Fine Art from Birmingham City University 2007 before completing his MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in 2012. He is a Birmingham based artist and has exhibited at Cass Sculpture Park, Lychee One Gallery, Tate St Ives, Studio Leigh and curated shows at Division of Labour. He has been invited onto residency programmes led by a range of arts organisations including Wysing Arts Centre, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Doremifasolasido at Florence Art Centre, South London Infinity Projects. In June 2017 he opened Modern Clay in Birmingham – a socially engaged ceramics studio aiming to remove the boundaries between fine and applied arts and crafts.