This body of porcelain work emerged out of the Material Matters project. Being new to me, I feel the work has always been at an exciting stage and it is a relationship that I will continue to explore. There are many seductive qualities to this material such as its density, smoothness, whiteness, brightness and brilliance. I enjoyed my early experiments embedding glaze into it when soft and unfired but am more recently fixated on how the glazes I’ve used on grogged stoneware for decades behave with its bisque fired surface. In areas they unite, fluxing together and in others, the glazes crawl, peel and pull away from the body revealing multiple layers and the body beneath. Embracing the imperfect and those qualities that would otherwise be considered faults, allows for expression through the materials themselves and their interactions. I feel they reveal something very human about lived moments that resonates with me. As Francis Bacon said “Consciousness of mortality sharpens one’s sense of existing.”
I can lose myself for some time smoothing and sanding the bottoms of the smaller, more intimate pieces and more time again exploring the glazed areas. Initially made in a time when touch was fraught with fear and anxiety, I found comfort here, but this smoothness is only valued in contrast to the visceral and textured glazes laying above. Together they offer intriguing and stimulating experiences, visually complex and diversely sensuous and tactile.
Photography: Dewi Tannatt Lloyd
