‘Curvilinear Constructions’

Bone china is highly responsive to changes in light – it can shift seemlesly between opacity and translucence, gradually or instantaneously, as light moves in relation to its surface. The clay can also take on the finest of textural detail – either impressed into the clay when soft or through carving the dried clay before it is fired – and once it has left the kiln, these textures are captured in a pristine ‘crisp’ matt whiteness. The ‘Curvilnear Constructions’ were the first pieces I made using the waterjet cutting process, which enabled structures to be made that had previously been impossible. Cut from ‘super-thin’ handrolled sheets of bone china, a set of variously shaped ‘slot-together’ elements form a construction system that allows structures to ‘grow’ organically outwards in any direction as I built them. More importantly, by permitting the elements to be arranged at different angles to one another, a full complex array of shadows, translucence, pattern and surface texture could be seen all at once in a single object under a static light.