Material History

Rapparee - commission for the Centre for Material Thinking

About the Commission

The cove of Rapparee in the town of Ilfracombe holds the moment the Transport Ship ‘The London of London’ ran aground in the 18th Century carrying the spoils of the French Revolutionary war from St Lucia. The tragic event has left traces of evidence held within the geomorphology of the coastline. My process of investigation will transform the information left in the cove to understand how disappearance can become emergent and matter not escaping can become manifest.

The digital residency for the Centre for Material Thinking will be an opportunity to archive my creative process in response to this site. The use of digital and physical media will consider the cove as phenomena, where the interconnections of matter will form an assemblage, animating within the present as part of a vital material process.

Assemblage and Site

Dig, connect, embed, sculpt, carve, morph and entwine all describe something of my creative process that seeks to engage with site. A non-linear history, a geological formation, a lateral slice through time and place. I continue forming connections between sculpture and ceramics, between the technological and magical structures, the actualities of those pauses that lead to the construction.

I’m interested in how a process of making can describe a morphology of matter-information as an ebb and flow of forces impacting the work, using events as a starting point from the past and finding their way to the present.

These vessels bring together the sculptural formation of an artefact, where found minerals and metals from the North Devon coastline are impacted into the surface of the stoneware body.