The Auction House: It's Just a Feeling, Simon Bayliss

This exhibition runs until the 30th May 2026

Walking in to the Auction House this time, I was greeted by some ceramics, a wall of pictures and a film.  Although I looked at the ceramics first, it was the film that really made sense of everything for me.  The film was set to a dance track put together by Simon and showed images of people and pottery.  This sounds simple but it was clear to me that a counter-culture prevalent in my teenage and student years as being referenced.  

In the 90s, dance culture, raves and ecstasy, was a big thing.  It caused a lot of outrage amongst polite society, so even if you were not part of it, it was hard to be completely oblivious.  After the death of Leah Betts, there was a lot of talk about the dangers of taking Ecstasy.

The music in the film directly reference a style I remember from the 90s and would relate directly to raves, even though it is a new piece of music.  The people in the film were obviously feeling the effects of drugs.  There was lots of chewing, blank faces but there was also wide staring eyes.  There was clips of ceramics and pottery being thrown and then as the film progressed a large pot started to move with the music in surreal fashion, before collapsing.  Pottery in subsequent clips became increasingly surreal.

The film was not a 100% comfortable to watch , it was edgy and chaotic.  As well as a certain nostalgia, I was left with the question of what it would be like to throw pots while high?  Watching the Great Pottery Throwdown, it always seems like such a tactile experience.  Would you end up with wobbly pots like the ones in the exhibition?  The extreme collapsing pot in the video, before it collapsed anyway.

I didn't get the references of the marks on the plates but as I wandered back through the ceramics on the tables, I saw a an ashtray with a superman logo and had a small moment of, I know what this is...  Confirmed as I looked at the images on the back wall.  There was a repeating set of pictures in two different colours.  Each set showed the makers mark of a particular potter next to the mark from a type of Ecstasy pill.  The similarities were spot on and undeniable.

I kind of feel that having arrived at this point in the exhibition, I had actually reached the start of this body of work....  A connection between the culture of pottery and rave culture of the 90s.  There was a handy leaflet which explained things further and while I had gotten most of the references, I had not got all.

I was a rock chick, a sometime goth.  My friends did not wear bucket hats, and so for me, they are not part of my nostalgia of the 90s.  Once pointed out though, it was clear that the pots were referencing upside down, slightly bent out of shape, bucket hats.  These pieces were not only referencing the warping surreal ceramics of the film.  Covered in colourful images, I particularly liked the two with the alien faces.  I would have liked to see some smiley faces somewhere though.

The collection of plates on the wall...  I didn't realise these were also marks from pills, but those of the generation that carried on partying after mine, once I was at work.  

The urinal was interesting to me, because this referenced a piece of art history I literally only just learnt about reading Grayson Perry's book, Playing to the Gallery.  In it there is a discussion of what is contemporary art and how under certain circumstances, it can be anything.  In the 1910s, Duchamp first put forward the idea that art could be anything and having decided this he put a urinal in an exhibition In New York.  Although the urinal was destroyed, a photo lived on.  

Although I got the art reference of the urinal and I understood how it was connected to rave culture with the text written inside, I missed some of the other connections.  Undoubtedly because being female, I didn't end up with the same set of contexts as a man in the same times, pilly willy was not something my closest friends were likely to suffer from.  I was aware though that they now use waste water analysis to give an indication of the amount drug use in a neighbourhood.  

The words written on the urinal "so we can be on the same vibe to weave our thoughts into one star I love ya man" were an anonymous text sent to Simon following a rave and he was never able to find out who this message was from.  I like the humour of this.  The personal history.  I love a good story.

It's clear to me that as much as we think things are completely new to our generation when we are young, we rarely realise just how much we are referencing the past.  Not until much later anyway.  The marks on these pills seem so different to me now.  It's just marketing, really.  I had not realised that we have reached a point where academia is studying this underground culture and writing papers on it.  

This body of work actually was brought about by academic study.  Dr Peder Clark is a social historian who has researched the use of ecstasy and he invited Simon Bayliss to work on a commission because of his background in dance music and previous references to dance culture in his work.  I love art like this, that makes me think and make new connections.  

I did have another thought as I looked at the ceramic pieces...  I wish more people would go to exhibitions like this.  I was at the Grayson Perry exhibition at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum recently and it was so very busy.  It's not hard to imagine Grayson at a different point in his career, putting on similar small exhibitions in venues like the Auction House.  We don't need to wait for an artist to be discovered, to become famous, we can go and look at their art now.