ELLA PORTER PORTFOLIO OF PRACTICE
CONTENTS A R T I S T S TAT E M E N T
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T H E C O P P E R P L AT E
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ABSENCE AND PRESENCE IN MARK MAKING RESONANCE OF PLACE
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GRIDS: SCREENS, MIRRORS 8-11 A N D W I N D O W S D I G I TA L D R A W I N G S END NOTES
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A R T I S T S TAT E M E N T I am drawn to clay’s unique ability to preserve the act of making, as both conscious and unconscious moments of touch are held in the surface of the ceramic object. My practice displays a strong relationship between surface and form, informed by a BA in painting and printmaking. As I explore ideas surrounding the mark of the maker, temporality, trace and place, I refer to a range of historic ceramic artefacts, such as the cuneiform tablet, as well as writings on social theory, in particular Marc Auge’s Oblivion. Throughout the making of a work there is a continual shift between layering and erasing: a conversation with the material. I make careful and subtle interventions at strategic points during the mutable states of the clay. By visually scanning the surface of an evolving work, I read impressions it may have picked up. These impressions directly inform the conscious actions I impose on the material. The end point of a work is not defined by firing the clay, as I continue to alter the surface once the object is fixed as ceramic. I sense the conclusion of a work when I reach a place of wanting to hold onto what is left - a sense of something pre-existing revealing itself. Surface Confliction - 2020 - Terracotta, Porcelain and Wood - H37m W31cm D12cm
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T H E C O P P E R P L AT E Throughout the last year I have been exploring processes of printmaking, in particular copper plate etching, alongside my ceramic practice. I use methods and approaches associated with both media, often approaching my clay panel works as a printmaker would a plate, and I work on the copper plate as if it were a sculptural object in its own right.
Plate Impression - 2021 - Debossed Print on Paper - H20cm W17cm
Plate Impression - 2021 - Inked Debossed Print on Paper - H20cm W17cm
I started exploring the copper plate after a research trip to Stoke-on-Trent where I met with Paul Holdway, Spode’s head plate engraver. Paul had worked on the intricate and skilled job of creating copper plate transfer prints for use on table wear, a skill set that has been largely lost since the closure of many ceramic factories in Stoke. Responding to the traditional processes learnt from Paul, I have explored all elements of the technique to find the areas I want to take forward and use in a contemporary context within my sculptural practice. The result has been a shift in my approach to making rather than a direct application of the traditional process of copper plate transfer printing. The way I now approach clay, is informed by knowledge of both ceramic and intaglio print. I prepare the surface of a clay slab with the next stages of my process in mind, often fixing the clay by bisque firing it before working into the ceramic surface further. I have found that use of reductive methods such as sandblasting and water erosion share qualities of acid biting into a metal plate. The removal of material helping an object to take shape in a sculptural way.
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Gestures of Preservation - Copper Plate - 2021 - Acid Eroded Copper -H20cm W17cm
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ABSENCE AND PRESENCE IN MARK MAKING Once a Whole Forest - 2021 - Glazed Terracotta and White Clay - H36cm W43cm D2cm
Alongside works created through careful and controlled planning, other works like the one above have been realised intuitively, slowly shifting in direction between abstraction and figuration at different stages of its making. Often starting with a blank slab of clay my working methods are not so far removed from painting; I create my canvas or sheet from clay and I work upon its surface with a brush. However, rather than sitting proudly on the surface the brush marks I apply are temporary, they act to preserve what is already there, in this way my methods have a closer connection to printmaking. The use of resist materials protect the surface from erosion and wear, the brush mark will almost become absent, as I pre-empt the next stages of making, where I use reductive processes to remove ceramic material untouched by the brush. On the work above I chose to obscure most of the preserved marks made using a dry paint-like glaze which leaves just an impression of my past mark making beneath its surface. Some areas have been sanded back to reveal lines of darker tone, the image left is one that alludes to a landscape; a tree and path, perhaps once a whole forest.
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Through traces left visible from the layering and erasing process, the work engages with ideas surrounding our everchanging memories of place, a sense of re-working or filling in of fact and fiction. I have taken significant influence from Marc Augé’s text Oblivion, he writes: “One must know how to forget in order to taste the full flavour of the present, of the moment, and of expectation, but memory itself needs forgetfulness: one must forget the recent past in order to find the ancient past again.”1 Detail - Once a Whole Forest -2021 The Air is Raw - 2021 - Parian Porcelain - H10cm W15cm
On this porcelain form I have used the brush mark to mask out areas of relief, here I have begun to explore use of layering within the clay body, allowing the darker layer to add tonal qualities beneath the thin areas of white sitting above it.
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RESONANCE OF PLACE Artefact from Glandford Shell Museum, North Norfolk. Note reads: “Rocks bored by rock borers (prob. Hiatella) one also with fossil shell impression”
The techniques I use are not only a means to make the work but have become heavily tied to the conceptual side of my practice. Processes such as water erosion and sandblasting, have a direct connection to natural processes associated with the landscapes and places that inform specific works. For example, the holes made in stone by rock borers. This sample was found on the same bit of North Norfolk coastline that I reminisce upon during the creation of these works. The quality of the edges of the rock and the holes formed through its surface have both influenced decisions made when working upon my own objects. Over Foam-Flecked Waves and Pierced by Light - Stained Stonewear - H17cm W17cm D10cm
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‘Fossil raindrop impressions, on top of wave rippled sandstone, from the Horton Bluff Formation (Mississipian), near Avonport, Nova Scotia’
This artefact is not one with a significance to place for me, but rather an amazement at the distilling and preservation of something as ephemeral as the weather. When considering links between my process and concepts, I have been drawn back to looking at this fossil, like clay it preserves a moment in time, surfaces in my works start to share qualities of the fossil; surface and form becoming intertwined through this process that mimics natural weathering, revealing once flat marks and moments of touch to also be part of the body of an object.
Washed Grey With Dawn - 2020 - Stained Porcelain - H11cm W13cm D1.5cm
a moment of interaction. The formation of relief
Stiffkey Marshes, North Norfolk
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GRIDS: SCREENS, MIRRORS AND WINDOWS Reflections of Connectivity and Solitude - 2021 -Tin Plate , Steel Wire
and Wood H26cm D3.5cm W33cm
‘By virtue of the grid, the given work of art is presented as a mere fragment, a tiny piece arbitrarily cropped from an infinitely larger fabric. Thus the grid operates from the work of art outward, compelling our acknowledgement of a world beyond the frame.’ 2 - Krauss In the making of this work, Garden From The Past, I contemplate the archaeological practice of carefully revealing an artefact, dusting and scrapping away layers of mud. Some of my methods may be more readily associated with traditions of sculpture and painting but I am drawn back to ceramic through a process of excavation - materiality linking the object to the artefact that inspired its creation. In this case the cuneiform tablet has informed many of my decisions. This cuneiform clay fragment acts as a vehicle for communication its imprinted surface holding the messages of the earliest writing system. The grid appears throughout my practice, used initially when thinking about the built environment and architectural structure. However, the grid has also taken on new meaning when thinking about our confinement over the past year. The grid exists as a framing device in the context of painting or window within architecture providing a view beyond the immediate spaces we live in.
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Garden From The Past - 2021 - Terracotta - H41cm W32cm D1.5cm
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Photograph taken 2019 at Stiffkey Marshes, North Norfolk, during a sea fret.
A fret or haar, is a still low fog from the sea that can sit inland for days, obscuring views usually visible; you can only see the immediate space in front of you - I could clearly hear the waves on the shore but because of the fret I could not see them.
“We might say that this capacity of objects to serve as traces of authentic experience is, in fact, exemplified by the souvenir. The souvenir distinguishes experiences. We do not need or desire souvenirs of events that are repeatable. Rather we need and desire souvenirs of events that are reportable, events whose materiality has escaped us.”3 – Stewart In this case my photograph is the souvenir but it lacks tactility and materiality. Over the past year I have had a longing for this place and the expansiveness of the space that it offers. The Mind’s-Eye Window , a porcelain work of five panels, explores, through relief and brush mark, a sense of holding on to the ephemeral - a fossilisation of memory. A suggestion of touch is implied through the textured surface and minimal white, perhaps even alluding to a sense of physically touching the place where the memory was born and in this way the work operates as a token of place, a fabricated souvenir imbued with longing.
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Right: Detail - Panel three -The Minds-Eye Window - 2021 - Porcelain - H19cm W23cm D1.5cm Below: The Minds-Eye Window - 2021 - Porcelain - H19cm W123cm D1.5cm
“Memories are crafted by oblivion as the outlines of the shore are created by the sea.”4 - Augé
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D I G I TA L D R A W I N G S Through a desire to explore a larger scale in my work, I have created digital renders of sculptures that relate in scale to the human form. The structure of these sculptures draw on a direct connection to industrial architectural forms such as gas cylinders. Their framework would be made of steel, constructed to allow curved ceramic panels to hang from an interior frame. The negative spaces within the panels would respond to and enhance the viewers experience of shifting light as they move around the work. The qualities of shadow and light changing with natural light throughout the day. These speculative works have the potential to sit in an outdoor environment as well as an interior gallery setting.
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END NOTES 1 - Marc Augé, Oblivion. (1998) Minneappolis: University of Minnesota. p. 3 2 - Rosalind Krauss, Grids. (1979) The MIT Press. URL: https;//www.jstor.org/ stable/778321 p. 61 3 - Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. (1984) Baltimore: John Hopkins University press. p. 135 4 - Marc Augé, Oblivion. (1998) p. 20
Inside cover image - Traces - Ella Porter - Pencil Drawing - W59cm H42cm
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