Recipient of the RMIT Ceramic Student Association Club Year 3 Award.
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Hello! I am an emerging Melbourne-based sculptural ceramicist. I have an expanded ceramic practice utilising hand building, modelling techniques and using emotive surface colouring and treatments. My work often focuses on creating relationships between a series of sculptural pieces to create narrative themes and connotations. For me, establishing a meaningful installation encounter between my work and the audience is the overarching aim of my art practice.
My conceptual interests are in mental health and trauma grounded in my identity as a lived experience. I am fascinated by the link between trauma and art, and the vulnerability of the childhood phase of life. My complex sculptural forms are feeling-driven during the making process and the acts of carving and coiling I do are therapeutic, thus the making process also reflects my interest in the role art plays with relation to trauma.
CAPTIVE IN THE CHEST CAVITY is a depiction of the physical symptoms of a trauma-induced response through sculptural bodily forms. This project is an abstract and nightmarish visualisation of symptoms such as hyperventilation, rapid heart palpitations, chest tightness, and physical discomfort. The experience of a trauma-induced response resurfaces suppressed adverse feelings which I attempted to capture in the structure of my clay forms—feelings of captivity, tension, discomfort, and emptiness. Mediums used in this project are stoneware clay, mid-fire black clay, oxides, white terra sigillata, and drip glaze.
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Koa Wamsteker