About
My work begins with an obsession with Victorian London: its peculiarities, rituals, imagery and social customs; the pomp and ceremony, the rigid formality, the debauchery, excess and sharp distinctions of class. I am drawn to the aesthetic of the period and to the extraordinary detail of a society that could be both highly ordered and deeply unruly. From this research I have created an imagined world of my own, existing on the margins of a faded and decrepit Victorian freakshow. Here, the spectacle is only the backdrop. The real inhabitants are the peculiar characters who live behind it, each with their own personality, role, relationships, histories and habits. Their world is populated by the extraordinary, the absurd and the faintly ridiculous. Hand-built stoneware gives this imagined world a physical presence. My ceramics become characters, objects and fragments of its strange visual language, shaped by the imagery and ideas that emerge from my research. Monochrome surfaces, layered washes and distressed finishes create the grime, wear and faded splendour of a freakshow long past its prime. Writing is integral to the world-building, with rhyming narratives providing the voices, histories and relationships that sit behind the physical work. The more I discover about Victorian society, the more material I find for my own world. My research provides its foundations; imagination, humour and an enduring fascination with the peculiar give it life.
Project overview
Narratives In Clay
The aim of Narratives in Clay is to explore how written narratives can be translated into physical ceramic form. My work is situated in the margins of a faded and decrepit Victorian freakshow, focusing not on the spectacle itself but on the overlooked characters, lives and stories that exist around its edges. The margins are where my interest lies: the places, people and narratives that might otherwise remain unseen. Writing is integral to my making process. I begin with rhyming narratives, allowing characters, histories, relationships and moments within the stories to develop before considering how they might be expressed through clay. The resulting pieces are not literal representations of the poems, but three-dimensional interpretations of their essence, or of a particular character, image or moment within them. I am interested in what can be retained from a narrative when it moves from words into physical form. My ceramic surfaces contribute to this translation. Through hand-built stoneware, monochrome finishes, layered washes and distressed surfaces, I create an appearance of age and dirt that reflects the faded, neglected atmosphere of the freakshow itself. Through Narratives in Clay, I am interested in the relationship between object and story, and in how a ceramic piece can communicate something of a narrative without illustrating it literally. The project explores how much of a story can be contained within form, and what is gained, lost or transformed when words become clay.
Loved To Death
Lady Delores Raphus-Schilling and her Weaponised Parasol
Jago Deaders RIP Bust
Lady Delores Raphus-Schilling Bust
Scrawny Bust
