NOW I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP
Drawn from ceramics-based processes, my creative practice forms via constituent and material relationships as an exploration of metamorphosis. Metamorphosis is the free space of transition outside of notions of containment, restraint, and inhibition.
Incorporating found objects with traditional ceramic techniques such as porcelain staining, plaster mould making and press moulding, my practice is focused on regenerating material memory and narrative through a process of partial destruction that occurs in a high-firing kiln. Reflecting on cycles of rebirth and decay and working with gathered material fragments that I have gleaned from the world, I create works that are devised as a type of co-occupation, as an inter-mingling and fusing of material elements that compose a single form. The process of selecting and transferring fragments of the everyday into new ceramic forms means that the elements that I compose come to perform as a ‘new self’, or a novel entity.
Walking and exploring, I gather discarded metal and organic materials from urban spaces, inviting chance and memory, as stratagems, into my studio. My creative research is driven by experimentation into the material traces of collected waste, found, and then re-purposed when combined with ‘precious’ porcelain. Collected materials inhabit my psychological and physical space, finding their way into my creative processes, to be encased or embedded in porcelain, while partially destroyed traces of these added materials remain after the transformation afforded by the high-firing process. The energy of the kiln generates unexpected material combinations and relationships. In the sensory engagement of dripping, melting, slumping, tearing, fusing, folding, and fluxing of glass, steel, porcelain, glaze and organic forms, my creative practice aims to generate new material relationships, surfaces and forms comprised of traces and remnants.
Through a continuous cycle of material destruction and regeneration informed by notions of metamorphosis, my creative work investigates personal narratives along with interrogations into the decorative arts as a feminist space. Through the distortion and the re-imagining of the ornament and the decorative in craft traditions, my work openly questions the conventional. Through material collaboration, my creative research reinterprets ceramic practices and feminine paradigms to find or locate alternative understandings.
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