Zoe Preece

Artist statement

Liminal spaces, threshold points within transformative processes - these ambiguous, indeterminate spaces exist in the moments just prior to, or just post the emergence or dissolution of identifiable structures and status.

The domestic arena embodies this liminal space for me. The unseen backdrop of domestic patterns and rituals intersects the events and experiences that create the narrative of our lives, constituting a space that remains suspended forever in-between.

Ceramic processes are highly transformative. Within the confines of a kiln, solids can become liquid, clay can become glaze, enabling the resulting artefacts the potential of displaying a mid-state condition.

Through the addition of varying degrees of flux and heat to the porcelain clay body, I attempt to articulate the liminal space, capturing moments in the firing process, just as a change is taking place, creating impressions of frozen moments of movement. Transformative performances concealed within a kiln, producing outcomes which upon cooling, have the potential to behave as still frames within processes of change.

There is something akin to the meniscus that is formed on a full glass of water in the softened and bulging edges of these partially melted forms - a moment of pent up potential.

Through both installation and the creation of still lives, my work questions established notions of value, attempting to bring the unseen and often disregarded to the fore. It is an archive of both the sounds and tasks that go unnoticed within a domestic space, and an enquiry into the materiality of ceramic - through the gradual stripping away of identities, it attempts to actualise an experience of the liminal.