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Friday 24 January 2014

Developing a dialogue

It has been an age since I've updated on here and as we're entering mid term review, are nearly through with January and I haven't even said * Happy New Year * yet, it's about the right time to reflect on what's been going on...

Last term was very busy. I co-curated an exhibition at uni which was fun, although a little stressful at points. The outcome was great though and it was well received across the board. We created an online archive of the exhibition, which you can see here

In terms of my work, I was a little distracted with organising the show so development has been slow, however, there have been some interesting things happening so...let's reacquaint ourselves and get back up to date!

Right, you remember that cloth that absorbed all the slip? Well, here it is after it got fired:


 It's an interesting texture but I'm not that keen on the overall look. 
I feel like this technique has been done to death a bit so I'd like to develop something new...

I tried out some different cloths and sponges to varying successes



And although this leaked to begin with, the outcome of the sponge was quite fantastic 
- like giving birth to some coral!


The natural movement in the pieces gives the work some real energy and personality


And when placed side by side there's an interesting dialogue going on between them all


I wanted to consider the re-usability of the moulds and wondered about adding a zip?


It was very successful indeed! 


More forms took shape 
(and even alluded to functionality - could this be a jug?)



Development drawings


And a thinking through how to reuse those redundant moulds....could they become sculptures themselves?


More zips and twisted forms


And inspiration from the strangest of sources!


Continuing the dialogue with some plaster forms


And developing some shapes out of the finer more flexible cloths


There's a real question about the value of material and object beginning to appear....

Arranging the objects to consider how they might work together in a collection:


And a happy accident from the kiln where the glaze caused a crack in one of the vessels and split it in half. 

The splitting created a problem and the solution lay in the newly developed cloth samples and so the beginnings of a hybrid ceramic collection have been born!


It's now time for mid term review and some time away from the studio to write up my dissertation. Then hopefully after that I can be a bit more regular with my updates. 
That said however, it's really not that long now til it's all finished!? 
Where did those 3 years go...?