Jacqueline Spedding, Passing Time (detail), 2013. Making Ground, Blue Mountains Cultural Centre City Art Gallery, 23 Aug – 6 Oct, 2013. Photo by silversalt

STATEMENT

Coming from ceramics, I have a strong sense of materiality. I am interested in exploring how we respond to objects and spaces physically, mentally and emotionally. I am also passionate about ideas. So the two are married together – thinking through materials. There are so many beautiful things in the world but for me art needs to engage the mind as well as the senses. Beauty is definitely a strategy but there needs to be something that drives it.

I have always been drawn to things that are old or breaking down – there is something about the nature of things that becomes clearer when they begin to fall apart. I work toward similar qualities in my work. I use a lot of organic material in my work to help build up and break down form. It fires out in the kiln and you get lovely echoes left in the clay. It’s endlessly fascinating.

Ultimately, it is a belief in our interconnectedness that drives me; the idea that we exist in a complex web of connections to other bodies, objects, spaces and environments, not as separate entities in our own autonomous worlds.