Sassy Park
Masculin Féminin
19 April – 11 May 2022
Underlying my work is the concept of fragility both in the materiality of clay and within the human condition. My practice questions generally accepted ideas and stereotypes of domestic ceramics which includes plates and figurative works. I continue to play with historical, cultural and personal references in my work to consider wider themes of values and expectations within contemporary society. Ceramic objects come embedded with ideas from their past utilitarian and decorative uses. I am especially interested in their use for ritual purpose and as souvenirs. I explore notions of value and ideas of vulnerability through concepts of scale, intimacy, and humour. Within my themes, it is the quotidian matters that need remembering and commemorating. In figurative works, we recognise humanity, activity and emotion which suit the direct and honest qualities of the clay.
In this new body of work, I take my starting point from French New Wave Cinema of the 1960’s. The title comes from Jean-Luc Godard’s film, Masculin Féminin (1966). This film and others of La Nouvelle Vague serve as a personal reference point to consider the portrayal of gender through art history and culture. The exhibition presents an intimate iconography in the form of busts, figurative works, plates and egg cups. Comic brides, men with flowers and animals, caring fathers, actors and actresses, and sons and daughters are modelled and painted to be presented as a narrative of objects, while plates and egg cups beome the carriers of messages and ideas. Personal icons and histories become stilled in ceramic, pulling us back anecdotally and materially into their past.
Sassy Park
March 2022
