YORK ceramic artist Ben Arnup's flat but working teapots go on show at the Pyramid Gallery, York, from 6pm tomorrow.

The exhibition theme is based around the teapot and relates back to a piece of work held in the York Museums Trust collection of British studio ceramics. "The ongoing refurbishment of York Art Gallery has inspired me to revisit the theme and although interpreted into a flattened form and designed as an object of art, these pieces are actually made as functional teapots," says Ben.

Ben is always pushing the boundaries of form and decoration, suggests gallery owner Terry Brett. "Here he focuses on a familiar domestic vessel, the teapot, and flattens its form and tricks the eye by means of tracing the design in perspective on to the surface," he says.

"Ben is a leading exponent of trompe l'œil ceramics that play with the viewer's perception of perspective and his distinctive flattened ceramics are held in international private collections as well as English museums."

Since being awarded a Craft Council development grant in 2009, Ben has developed this new style of work in which naturally coloured clays have been rolled and sliced, re-assembled into slabs and accented with a thin stripe of porcelain and formed into a flattened vessel form. The body of work in this exhibition utilises the marbling techniques that he developed during that period.

Ben has exhibited throughout Europe and the United States since studying art at York School of Art. After a period when he qualified and practised as a landscape designer, followed by a few years as a lecturer in ceramics, he now works from a studio workshop at his York home and sometimes at his sister Hannah Arnup’s pottery in Ballymorris, Ireland.

The exhibition also features etchings, drypoint prints and a painting by London artist Trevor Price, whose work is hand made and hand printed in his studios in London and St. Ives.

He studied at the Falmouth and Winchester Schools of Art. By the age of 28, he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers and he is now the society's vice-president.

Trevor exhibits widely throughout Europe with regular solo shows of both paintings and original prints. He has won several national printmaking awards and in 2011 he was the invited Printmaker of the Year at Printfest, Britain’s only art fair dedicated to printmaking.

His work is held in various collections, such as the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, Guangdong Museum of Art in China, Yale University , the Office of Public Works in Dublin and the Bank of England.

Ben Arnup's Teapots exhibition will run at Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, until November 25, open Monday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm, and on Sundays from noon to 4.30pm.