James DerwinSouth Hams Pottery

Born of the sea, wrought by hand and tempered by fire. These unique ceramic sculptures are naturally inspired and simply crafted. The forms resemble distant seabirds, silhouetted by light and abstracted by reflection. The sea, over time, may reveal old ironwork from within vast concrete sea defences, blunting rebar and grinding concrete, smoothing it to the touch, as clay in my hands. Bent, polished and clinging onto permanence as a seabird clings on to life despite the abyssal sea.

The sculptures are formed from muscle memory and conceived in a few minutes. Often, I stand closed-eyed, I search my imagination as I smooth and squeeze the clay, so that its manipulation is a conversation and my imagination a voice in its form. Mostly the sculptures are 2-3 pieces of solid clay only. The birds are often solid, only the largest birds are hollowed out. The rocks are often a violent process of bashing, stabbing, chipping and hacking when wet or dry. These are as rudimentary as sculptures get. When the piece is produced it is prominently branded, it adds order visually to the centre of the form. It punctuates the handmade process before it is dried for refined finishing techniques and glazing. I hope there is a unique aesthetic balance between expressive form, emotional narrative, material surface quality and artistic brevity. And this what is spoken into the clay so it may speak to you, of that distant seabird, silhouetted, afar.