Judith Davies
Large Pale Blue Vessel
2007
My ceramic work pushes at the boundaries of the vessel form and attempts to conflate the rigour and discipline of modernist ceramics with a contemporary view of the human form as a fragile and fragmented thing. I use the metaphor of the body as a vessel, referencing the anthropomorphic language of pottery- foot, belly, shoulder, neck and the complex, layered and culturally diverse associations that connect the female form to a container.
I hand build my work slowly- dictated by the demands of using porcelain which does not like to be hurried. I spend time smoothing and burnishing the surface and after an initial firing, saggar fire my work, adding seaweed, salt and oxides.
This affects the surface, in effect painting its own pattern, producing colour and markings. In the firing a magic happens, an alchemy, the form and surface marry and the work gains its own presence, something more than I could predict.
There is a tension between the slow careful building of the work and the giving over to chance, to possibilities beyond my control that takes place in the firings. It is this contrast and tension between control and chance that make working with clay so compelling for me.
The markings on the surface that the firing produces seem to give a history to the work, referencing not only ancient artifacts but also the history that the experience of life writes on the surface of the body.
Judith Davies