there on the other shore

(From On Stage George Seferis)

there on the other shore presents a new body of work in which ideas—both metaphorical and real—of journey, transformation and longing are explored through porcelain objects.

Looking also to divergent areas of literature such as the ancient Greek epic poem Homer’s Odyssey, poetry of Modern Greek poets George Seferis and C.P Cavafy, and the poems of Emily Dickinson, this current body of work is an exploration of forms that hint at and have their origins embedded within the architecture and domestic objects of Ancient Greece and Rome.

Columns, cups, vases, bowls - Assembled vignettes - shape narratives that allude to social and material culture, the historical and the personal, in an attempt to tell stories of past and present through the allegorical potential and power of objects.

Parallel to this is the ongoing engagement with porcelain as a material and its aptitude for subtle and abstracted glaze surfaces. The mutable nature of light and shadow is enhanced by these surfaces and shapes, of which meld the formal and the abstract. Tone, form, and space are altered by light’s impermanent spectrum and fall when filtering through and around these objects.

Literature, particularly poetry, presents a constant lens through which to filter experience and see the world anew. This provides a starting point for a poesis and a convergence of thought and hand making. One of the most compelling attributes of porcelain for me is that it can yield many tones that alter in everchanging light - white, grey, pale white, pale grey… differing tones, all shifting with lights’ ephemeral nature.

This new work brings together five different porcelain clay bodies—each one having a variant character and a differing interaction with light.

And when it comes, the landscape listens

Shadows - hold their breath

Emily Dickinson - A Certain Slant of Light