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The last piece of a quartet of abstract ceramic art.
This piece represents an iconic urban Scottish landscape, the backcourt of a traditional tenement flat. I used a piece of reclaimed slate found locally to create the washing poles set with children’s tiny flat pressed ceramic clothes hanging out to dry. I used a square segment of artificial grass to represent the traditional drying green. The children were created from clay pressed into a mould and attached to the tree, depicting the innocence of bygone times when playtime was spent in the natural environment, carefree and hanging from trees. The children are supersized in this environment and were assembled as puppets using copper wire, hanging from the tree to invoke a darker meaning, the innocence of youth has vanished and fragile adults are depicted as broken individuals. This is further symbolised by the scattering of tiny ceramic skulls at the base of the tree depicting who has come before, the ancestral roots of the family tree. The family tree was created using a piece of locally sourced wood and I made a wire frame wrapped in twine then used a dry felt technique to create the trunk and branches. The three puppets are fired with different coloured glazes to continue the theme of ambiguity in the real world beyond black and white.
