Accesing The Void

Accessing The Void is informed by a handling session I had at the V&A looking at a cup with built in filter, made from clay from the island of Lemnos, clay believed to have healing properties and used since prehistoric times to make drinking vessels.

This ancient artefact was thinner and lighter than I had anticipated, carefully constructed so that the void beneath the filter was permanently enclosed and inaccessible to its viewer. I chose to make an object that responds to this internal space, giving the viewer access to the void and imitating the qualities of light that would have been held inside the ancient object. The undulating form of my porcelain vessel encourages light to bend and distort along the interior walls of the piece, as seen in the photographs below.

I contemplate through this new object how we as the viewer might embody the artefact, to view the interior of the vessel as if we were in the place of a fly trapped inside or the vessel itself - to observe from the vessel’s point of view.