BENEATH THE SURFACE
Tahlia Diaz’s artworks reference nature expressed through the experience of mourning and grief.
She has devised a unique form of coil rolling that creates a deteriorated and heavily textured clay surface by carefully assembling the repeated stretched terracotta and paper clay coils into sculptural forms that resemble weathered natural environments such as bark, stone, and trees.
Using the ancient technique of Saggar firing, where organic material is enclosed into a container to capture the earthy burnt carbon transferred onto the clay surface during firing in the kiln, the resulting fragile sculptural form invites the audiences to experience a connection to the body, with the ancient weathering of rocks, and trees; things that have lived and will die.
Motivated by themes of decay and deterioration explored by artists such as Andy Goldsworthy, her works considered ways to express the notion of a personal narrative of the acceptance of mourning.
