(Sculpture, [below] 2022, auctioned, Sotheby’s, Oct 18th 2022) porcelain, metal microfixings, springs

This is a series I’m working on called ‘Unstable’. It uses the cone shape that often features in my sculptural vocabulary, created in porcelain. They are held together, improbably, with nuts, bolts and washers, and hang on springs, suspended inside each other. The juxtaposition of porcelain with this instability and mechanistic fixings creates tension in the viewer, and the idea of metal against the porcelain sets the teeth on edge.
Current iterations are paired with a contrasting rough-textured curved stand and the two pieces are co-dependent. It can be displayed in multiple positions – at one orientation the cones nest inside each other, at another they spill out.
Like much of my work, it involves a tortuous process, and combines seemingly inappropriate materials. There is a tangential nod to the political zeitgeist from my work ‘A Fall From Grace’, however it’s really quite a personal series, referencing my own mental state in response to that climate.
That nothing is stable, and the cones can be literally upsidedown, the stand (in Unstable II) can be perpendicular (4 configurations possible), is a reflection of how we unmoored from reality we are when real-world referent is gutted from language in a post-modern world. It’s a very personal series, referencing my own mental state in response to a climate of authoritarianism, and the consequences of creating work about and within it.
There is also a resonance with illustrations of the concept of stable and unstable equilibrium in physics, which typically feature cones. I also feel there’s a sense of the moment just after an explosion in the nested cone structure.
Unstable II sold at Sothebys in April 2024 (this one has a curved stand from crank). Unstable III was shown as part of Vice & Virtue in summer 2024 (this one is laced with red ribbon and hangs from a butcher’s hook.)