she/her
Embodied is a material-led exploration of presence and absence, investigating how memory can be constructed from fragments rather than lived experience. Rooted in personal loss, the work translates photographic traces into ceramic vessels that act as containers of memory. Through iterative drawing, reconstruction, and material experimentation, including the use of lime as a reactive glaze and flux, the project explores instability, transformation, and the persistence of presence within absence.
To visually explore absence, I manipulated my imagery through sepia tones to evoke age and distance. By reducing opacity and subtly offsetting the images, a ghostly doubling emerges. These muted tones and slight misalignments suggest the passage of time, as the image appears to fade, reinforcing the idea of memory as fragile, unstable, and continually shifting.
To develop my forms, I began drawing gestural marks and movement lines with charcoal, these produced a variety of geometric forms, which were then torn and collaged to create more abstract and organic results.
Material innovation sits at the core of the project, with lime recontextualised from an architectural finish into ceramic practice as both glaze and flux. Its chemical reactivity generates rich, unstable surfaces, producing deep saturated hues alongside softened, eroded textures. Together, these processes create a palette of earthen pigments and diffused tones, where gradients, cracks, and surface disruptions become integral expressions of change and vulnerability.
The collapsing vessel series, represents themes of fading memories and transient presence. It includes a collection of five 15 x 15cm fragmented forms, each made from blended clay bodies and glazed in mixtures of lime oxide washes. The rich colours are deepened through a combination of reduction firings, producing entirely unique results.
The largest sculptures of the ‘Embodied’ collection aim to inject movement
