Sewing Machine, 2015, Layered Porcelain.

I am a ceramic artist based in Belfast. Key concepts in my practice are material, process and structure. In my work I challenge the fallibility of the material, making processes and the firing techniques exploring the fragility shared by all things. There is much reminiscent of Archaeology and Geology in my making processes. The sculptures allude to man-made objects in the natural world and are often built up or pared back with layers exposed to reference the object. The object is validated by the context and interpretations can be made of its function or cultural associations like a fossil set in strata or by what traces are made visible and preserved. Like Archaeology, conclusions can be drawn about cultural associations, the purpose, the hand and artistry of the maker and the process of manufacture as well as allude to material culture and our relationship and associations to materials. The contrast of technology  with the handmade are often referenced in my work. The passage of time and cultural/individual memory is also explored through transformation, sequences and accumulation and dissolution of material.
The handling of the material is important in understanding its limitations and potential. Exploring essential properties of the ceramic material as well as its associations is fundamental to my work. Presently I am working with parian porcelain which has cultural significance having been created in England to mimic marble to showcase sculptures at the Great Exhibition, London 1851.. My present work explores its qualities of translucency and associations to marble, its transformation and changing state as well as exploration of the changing light of the white porcelain,as a static mass or the optical effect of the wafer thin layers or geometric structures.