SEDIMENTS
Various clays, porcelain, soil, sand, stone, rice, beans, ceramic objects
30*30*35- 40*40*60cm
Jingdezhen, China | 2011
This series of experiments was a response to my arrival in the manufacturing centre of the planet, China. Global mass consumption is leaving behind a cultural record of our wasteful behaviours embedded in the landscape, be it ancient shards of pottery handmade for the emperor or slip cast industrial objects for international and domestic markets. Influenced through several experiences finding ancients shards in hill and river sides. I started layering rejected readymade ceramic objects from local studios and factories that had been cast away. With layers of porcelain and clay slips and other natural materials the forms started to resemble geological timelines. My studio in Jingdezhen was outside of the city and surrounded by rice paddies where I could watch the cycles of ploughing, planting, thinning, irrigating and harvesting from above. I initially used the rice for texture in the sculptures but the rice quickly started to grow in the damp clay, further changing the shape of the form. The sprouting rice soon came to be symbolic of the rural and agricultural beginnings and the cycle of life.