Topiaries

2019

I spend days attaching hundreds of protrusions to the surface of a single pot; a meditation on botanical forms, symmetry in nature, and the tension between the organic and the man-made. As I start my work the pot is a flower, with oval petals radiating from the centre. And then it is a fruit, or a stamen, or even the downy plumage of a bird. Then, as I progress further down the pot, it becomes something armoured and ancient. The protrusions are protecting the pot like a grid of scales protects a reptile. After it’s fired and the glaze has melted in high temperatures, it could become something different altogether. It could become an artefact thousands of years old, used in daily rituals. Or a primordial shell, even older, fossilised over millennia in the abyss. The pot is none of these things, because I alone make it by hand in my studio with just clay and water and minerals, but it is also all of these things. As my thoughts wander during the making process and I conjure up stories about the pot, I bestow an aura around it, giving the work its own new mythology.

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TOPIARIES

2019

I spend days attaching hundreds of protrusions to the surface of a single pot; a meditation on botanical forms, symmetry in nature, and the tension between the organic and the man-made. As I start my work the pot is a flower, with oval petals radiating from the centre. And then it is a fruit, or a stamen, or even the downy plumage of a bird. Then, as I progress further down the pot, it becomes something armoured and ancient. The protrusions are protecting the pot like a grid of scales protects a reptile. After it’s fired and the glaze has melted in high temperatures, it could become something different altogether. It could become an artefact thousands of years old, used in daily rituals. Or a primordial shell, even older, fossilised over millennia in the abyss. The pot is none of these things, because I alone make it by hand in my studio with just clay and water and minerals, but it is also all of these things. As my thoughts wander during the making process and I conjure up stories about the pot, I bestow an aura around it, giving the work its own new mythology.

View Catalogue