Perhaps the World Ends Here

My work is based upon my interest with archaeological remains, mainly Greek vases and ceramics found in the Levant. Exploring the shapes and methods of making and decorating, I was attracted to the fact that the decoration on these pots could convey the narratives of past civilizations. Traditional vase shapes felt very natural and familiar and this highlighted for me how deeply entrenched, like DNA, the features of these hand-made ancient relics are, even in contemporary life today. My work is made with the intention to act as a time capsule to record our everyday destruction of the natural environment on a global scale. In this way, I am joining and following the traditions of many human beings before me. Strong and durable as it is, a ceramics is the perfect material for a time capsule, with the thought that it can survive for thousands of years. Unlike many of the ancient vases I have studied, however, my own ceramic vases do not aim to narrate the great achievements of civilisation and the beautiful contribution that humans have made in the past, but rather the great things in this world that we have destroyed in recent decades. The images I painted and printed on my vases relate to current climate change issues. Through the use of familiar icons such as cows, factories and aeroplanes (quietly repeated in the decorative patterns of my surface designs), I aim not to shock but rather to educate, to raise awareness now and in the future of the effects of mass industrialisation, over farming, overfishing, mass production, over consumption and overpopulation of our times. I make ceramics vases that explores the way ceramic have been used to recount human history, the images I have been painting and printing on my vases relate to current climate change topics.