CERAMICS | KENT
How does your artwork reflect the transformation of materials and/or the idea of identity?
In these pieces I aim to create a questioning of identity. At first glance a pretty object, a girl presenting herself to the world, a mask chosen to show to the viewer. Yet the disrupted surfaces question this — what lies beneath, and is the subject content to simply exist to be a pretty object?
In See Me, the perfect pose and innocent looks draw attention from the hands behind her back, where she is showing the hand signal that denotes violence, a cry for help. Warpaint owns her mask applies her own selected surface, she gives herself strength with the face she wants to show the world. Miss Behaviour is well trained, an impassive and compliant face, yet perhaps not as she seems. Beneath the top surface of the slip, the things she should not say or do are written like tattoos upon her skin. Concealed beneath a veneer of beauty, yet she knows what lies beneath.
See Me, 2024, porcelain layered with oxides, glaze and slip, cast doll mask, fired dressmakers pins • £850
Warpaint, 2025, porcelain layered with oxides, glaze and slip, cast doll mask, gold lustre, additions, jesmonite • £850
Miss Behaviour (things I must not say or do), 2025, porcelain layered with oxides, glaze and slip, cast doll mask, fired dressmakers pins, jesmonite • £850
Find out more about Jemma Gowland here.