This piece explores the complex relationship between feminine beauty, making, work and feminine power. It works with a figure from my own mythology that emerged as an image in a dream.
It presents an unconventional beauty pressing her breast against a brick wall as she reaches forwards in an exaggerated gesture. Her boundary is only in front of her; there is no brick wall behind her.
The body of the woman is a solid piece of clay: the brick wall is built around her. Surface decoration is with contrasting matt and gloss slips and glazes. In particular, the white slip and pink glaze wash on her body accentuate the texture in her skin as they shrink and crack during firing. Her ‘makeup and nails’ are coloured gloss glazes.
These materials all develop when fired to 1260°C. She is an object that has emerged from my lived experience but, more widely, queries boundaries of work within which the feminine operates. A solid form, raw, cracked and imperfect, fixed in a gesture that reaches forward.
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