Ceramics suits me, I am used to disappointment: Making objects of contemplation

Ceramics is a practice full of hope and disappointment. It can be disheartening to open a kiln and see your expectations crushed. Creating in clay not only presents lessons in patience but develops an ability to cope with ongoing failures. Just like life, some things are beyond your control.

The history of ceramics and its uses resonates within us – an innate knowledge that is universal and cross-cultural. Questioning the generally accepted principles of ceramics, I play with meaning; the meaning of the object and the meaning of ceramics. Further, through this play and the particular historical and cultural place of ceramic work, I can address wider themes of expectations within society. Ideas of stereotypes, of the grandiose and the heroic, are investigated through concepts of scale, intimacy, and humour.

Through a material that is synonymous with fragility, I consider vulnerability through making objects that memorialise the forgotten and overlooked, and reframe perceptions of value and hierarchies. I express this through my interest in relationships, between people, and between people and things. In this way pots and figures go together. Pots speak of their fallibility and figurines represent vulnerable characters inspired from personal, historical and contemporary life such as forgotten women, hurt men and fallen cricket heroes. Ceramics is my form of social media, a communication for the present, and a commemoration for the future; a current and personal souvenir, a locus to make commentary, a surface on which to write, paint, and scratch