“I do not have a daughter, and I may never… though I have known her and her me…”

An exploration of desire and loss. A vigil, in devotion to all the ones who want children but cannot have them and all the ones that become pregnant unwillingly or in contexts where they choose not to or cannot not have them, to the babies born into war, addiction and loss, to the unmothered children and the parentified ones, to the mothers that cannot access choice and the ones coerced.

For my mother, for hers and for my daughter: May our softness serve us and our stories alchemise our strength like porcelain forged to stone through its process.

Matrilineal inheritance, cellular memory, the dowry passed from mother to mother. We inhabit and carry the stories of our ancestors. Clutch them to our breasts as we run, barefoot, from the constructs of our patriarchal habits and history. Hold them too when it’s quiet, caretaking for our communities. We hold them, and they hold us, just as we were held in the wombs of our mothers and grandmothers- through war, through abuse, through poverty, through violence. Rewriting patterns embedded in our bones... Each generation a little more.

This compulsive and devotional project of delicate porcelain forms, is a combination of wheel-thrown and hand-coiled ceramic, which act as a looking glass into the distorted feminine. Subverting the decorative arts to question and reflect society’s position on the feminine and how it affects health, sexuality, bodies, rites of passage, birth, loss, motherhood, equity and the environment. Referring to the feminine, as a gendered concept, refers to those female presenting and identifying as well as those who are gender queer, including my LGBTQI+ family.

Hand- rolled coils are pressed upon each other, one layer at a time, to create a lace like armour on the external surface of the vessel. Conjuring and reinforcing this visual effect is the use of handmade chainmail hand coiled and woven by friend and collaborator Gabriel Lewis, and platinum chrome lustre throughout. Fashioning the porcelain with some contemporary grit.

This ceramic coiling process naturally seeded as a meditative practice to manage the complex and fraught landscape of my fertility and desire up against the hormonal throes of being in my final years of fecundity as a birthing person. Using porcelain for this process references ceramics in the domestic environment and lends to the long and varied histories of house and home. Evoking rituals of caregiving, inheritance, and nourishment. The fine ‘china’ passed between the generations as well as the private spaces in which we gather ourselves back together away from the needs of others.

Creating these heirloom pieces that are so embedded with touch and process reveres and reflects the often invisible labour of the feminine and the hundreds of thousands of hours of repetitive, detailed and often demanding caregiving done in our communities and homes year after year.

This literally and figuratively translates into how one must work with the porcelain, reflecting through process, the tending and handling this delicate material requires. The pared-back palette and use of vintage decals strongly reference fine china and dinnerware from both the European and Asian continents, of which I draw my ancestral lineage.

Elevating Craft into a fine-art context supports audiences receiving and acknowledging its value to our culture and helps maintain it’s thriving in the future. Raising voices often undervalued and muted by society. Elevating the human exchange of time to outcome in a world hell-bent on productivity and efficiency. Slowing down as an act of resistance and defiance, both socially, environmentally and politically.