My ceramic work linked to still life painting, and, in a broader sense, to the relation between the twin histories of craft and fine art (especially painting) is the natural outcome of an ongoing internal debate I have with myself about ‘Pottery’, ‘Craft’ and ‘Art’ and the burden of being exposed to contemporary ‘Cultural Theory’.

In the late 1990’s, the ceramic work that most intrigued me was a series of Gwynne Hansen Piggot’s still life pieces. They had a stillness and timeless quality that seemed to elude to a range of meanings other than their manifestations as pots. I became interested in why a grouping of very nice but singularly beautiful but otherwise unremarkable pots seemed to develop such eloquence when in close proximity. I hypothesised in my newly acquired art-speak, that this was all to do with the syntagm (or syntax) rather than the paradigm (the concept or function, real or implied) of each pot. It seemed the special quality of the work was based on the negative space or gap surrounding each work, much as music is not dependent on each note but rather how each related to the other or the gaps and spaces between each. The whole, and all the contingent and contextual knowledge we have of quotidian lived domestic space, gave the work resonance and deeper meaning than would be evinced by each piece in singularity. The whole, and particularly the image of the whole, became more than the sum of its parts.

I aimed to investigate the relationship between objects and images based on the history of still life painting and the ceramic groupings each of us interact with everyday in the daily consumption of food and drink. This led to a body of work using pots and trompe l’oeil ceramic objects in ceramic domestic settings such as clay tables and chairs.

This work: “Throne’ attempts to develop this line of inquiry and investigates the relationships between objects and images that refer to the language of pottery and the conventions and histories of painting.