Fraser looks to be an ordinary young man. I met him in Bristol working at the Arnolfini Art Centre in Bristol waiting tables. I could have asked anyone in my home town to be a model for me. I wasn’t expecting an epiphany but are they ever anticipated. I realised that in my making I am always looking inwards, that the characters I represent are parts of me that I manifest in clay.
Placing Fraser here next to my other ceramic figurines the contrast brought me up short. Really is Fraser any more real or credible than ’Toots’ or ‘Rock –on’ (figure with bag on her head).
Shortly I will collect my motley tribe of figures ‘Les Saltimbanques’ from Turner Contemporary. I feel like I know this entourage, they are as familiar to me as my different states of dissociation, madness, fury and joy. We contain multitudes, don’t we? We might look ordinary but have all kinds of variations. The parts we don’t like we want others to carry for us. The parts we like we push to the front.
