Ros Perton

My work is concerned with questioning the traditional use of the materials and the accepted associations of beauty, usefulness and value in ceramic forms. How does the ordinary become extraordinary? How can clay become expressive of its own nature, history, and context, its function and its narrative? This body of work is a response to both the contemporary function and subsequent context of the ceramic object. As a maker, I use formal concepts to prise a response from the medium. These thrown ceramic vessels are ruptured, prodded, poked, punctured and torn. They are holed and made fragile. They appear to need the protection afforded by the surrounding or encasing coarser clay forms. Juxtapositions of tone; of lines and curves create a dialogue. In each piece a small drama is staged. The viewer is invited to consider whether their form and function is familiar, or whether the everyday nature of form and function is subsumed into a new experience which explores the materiality of clay within contemporary visual culture.