“My work is an exploration into material and place observing in particular processes of interdependence between water and geological change. The intention is to capture a moment in a process of change and to reflect upon the physical and metaphorical aspects of a place as a vessel with containment.
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Water saturates, shifts, seeps, explores, exploits, distracts, destroys, manoeuvres, penetrates, mixes, grades, attacks, finds a way, a path a passage, dislodges, surrounds, circulates, gravitates, yet can be drawn upwards to form clouds. It can contain contaminants, minerals, debris, and detritus. It can damage – uproot vegetation but gently carry its seed. It can create a multitude of sounds in its movement and yet at times travel peacefully in silence. It can be affected by external influences – light and dark, heat and air in motion. Water is constantly changing its condition.
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The experience of walking and being in a place often creates the necessary impulse from which to respond. I will often, almost daily follow a water course through a familiar landscape, where the activity of revisiting and being familiar with and more sensually aware, helps to shape and re-shape minute and seasonal changes. Terrain which visibly offers its contents such as crumbling coastal cliff edges, valley gorges, craters and volcanoes, underground mine-workings and the ever-changing industrial open-cast workings of the china clay pits, where each reveals unique geological and historic make-up and matrix content. Being inside, between or next such places always fills me with a sense belonging.
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After 16 years of working closely with the china clay industrial landscape, I have this year, secured my 3rd residency with IMERYS Minerals, which gives me access to work in the china clay pits, to research and to collaborate further with the industry.
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Fal Valley China Clay Pits 2001-2
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Buell Dyers, Par Docks 2008-9
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My response in clay is to find simple and appropriate construction methods. Exploring these are important to carry the message from place to clay so that I can construct with fluidity, working rhythmically, decisively and tentatively, recycling and merging imagination with memory in search of insights and surprise at every stage of the making and firing process.
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To help me achieve this I combine difficult materials – manufactured with indigenous materials of a place allowing each to express in combination, their own characteristics, determination and wilfulness. Materials that are most often used are porcelain, china clay matrix and china clay products; aggregates and natural combustible material As if being choreographed, the materials play their roles sometimes working in harmony with each other but more often causing stress and drama in their journey from wet through to dry, from clay to fired ceramic.”
Work available from:
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- Circle Contemporary, Hawkesfield, Atlantic Highway A39, Cornwall PL27 7LR
- Penwith Gallery, -Back Road West, St. Ives, Cornwall TR26 1NL
- St.Ives Society of Artists, Norway Square,Cornwall TR26 1NA
- Cornwall Crafts, Trelissick Gallery, Trelissick Gardens, Feock, Truro, Cornwall
- Cornwall Crafts, Trelowarren, Mawgan in Meneage, Helston, Cornwall
- 45 Southside, 45 Southside Street, Plymouth Barbican, Devon PL1 2LD
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