Close your eyes and relax. Smooth, sensual and eminently strokeable - a new multi sensory ceramics exhibition at Blackwell, The Arts and Craft House, is designed to let your fingers do the walking.

Sense and Perception will be the first touch-friendly exhibition to take place at Blackwell and the series of large, abstract sculptures by Felicity Aylieff really are striking stuff whichever way you chose to explore them.

Forget everything you thought you knew about ceramics - this show certainly isn't about fancy pots.

Visually, her work can be described as a series of solid, richly-coloured sculptures which occupy their space, apparently as weighty as cannon balls, sturdy as boulders.

But all is not quite as it seems.

Viewers may be surprised to learn these seemingly unyielding shapes are in fact hollow.

And each completed work - with gentle-sounding names such as such as Bittersweet, Bud and Seemless - is the end result of an unusually industrial and complex procedure.

Paradoxical stuff indeed.

Despite their smooth, precision-polished surfaces, Aylieff's sculptures have organic contours evoking the swells and rhythms of the sea, giant water-worn pebbles and shells.

But the best buzz of this exhibition has to be the fact that visitors are permitted to break all the art gallery rules' and actually touch the pieces.

Usually a privilege only extended to the artist, owner or curator, the absence of do not touch signs' makes this exhibition a more involving experience.

Featuring Braille signs for the visually impaired, the exhibition offers blind people a rare chance to explore art work themselves. Blackwell staff are also keen to encourage visually impaired visitors to discover many of the tactile features of Blackwell's home grown Arts and Crafts design - such as the carved oak panelling of rowan berries in the main hall.

Crossing the boundaries of sculpture and ceramics, Felicity Aylieff's creations are a law unto themselves.

Her work appears as a Manchester City Galleries touring exhibition at Blackwell until July 13. For details contact 015394-46139.

May 15, 2003 10:30