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INNER TEXTURES
SELECTED CLAY SCULPTURES. 2016

I refer to my latest clay works as inner morphologies or

inner textures.

Clay is significant to my current process due to its plasticity and essential contact with the elemental matrix of nature. My practice is a contemplation on fluidity, faithful to the process of becoming, ambiguity and is a study of solipsism and emergence.

Drawing on developmental biologist B. Goodwin’s research on morphogenesis in dynamic biological forms and D. Bohm’s ‘emergence’ as differentiation of form through movement, when developing the mass of the clay form, I press via bodily weight, often use wet clay, and enable clay forms to slump as an exploration of critical points of instability where new forms emerge.

This physical meditation in my work leads to ‘the zero zone’ where subject/object, potentiality/actuality become indistinguishable, analogous to what G. Agamben calls ‘singularity without real properties’, ‘the pure existence’ outside of psychological time.

At times the solidified memory of the movement in clay remains strong and latent until the form is submerged into the furnace of flames further twisting and turning until it can no longer bear - raptures occur, encrusted by the glaze of the ashes.

Some works remain unfired exposed in their becoming, ‘dependently arising’, impermanent and fragile.

Others are wood-fired in the anagama kiln. This four-day physical process, is a contemplation on internal forces of nature self organising, intense in the immemorial traditions of mankind.