Acts of devotion map personal relationships across a series of 45 porcelain pieces (each between 8×8 – 24x20cm).
They mark a particular period in time where intimate fantasies; everyday and imagined encounters have fuelled my imagination. I allow myself as a maturing woman and growing daughter to take myself to the limits of my longing.
Without pre-planning I use the circular discs as mandalas, portals to my unconscious to consider the truth of my desires. Some are intensely intimate as I attempt, through getting closer and closer to the ceramic surface, to recall the feelings of these encounters and imagine their variance and resolutions.
In addition to sensual joy they were made daily as a ritual to hold my psyche as it spirals through hormonal chaos. They also offer me a mind map holding all parts of me together keeping my soul and sex alive. I am often in a dissociated state due to anxiety or depression, carving these was both soothing and containing. I feel and exist through my work.
They allow me to explore the full breadth of my experiences; the vision of an older woman exploring polyamory while ageing, while mothering, while holding a home. They are intensely private and secretive, while simultaneously offering the complete truth, should I choose to add individual narratives. Hopefully, as they course across the wall the viewer is invited in.
There are series of works that run and run, and there are mini-series or perhaps they are episodes, for me it is as much about feeling my way into a medium or way of working as transposing an idea.
Watercolours to accompany ‘Acts of Devotion‘ ceramic collection, 21 x 21cm on hand made paper.
‘Dont ask me where I’ve been, the way out is the way in’, Sam Hamill
