Rare Earth

Made around 2010, these pieces were first exhibited at Corvi-Mora in London for my solo show ‘Rare Earth’ in 2015.

Growing up, my mother was a humanitarian activist. A vegetarian for political and environmental reasons, we would shop differently, always thinking of the impact of what we consumed on others and the planet. Every time we went for our weekly shop at the local supermarket, my mother would ask to see the manager and complain about the sourcing of the bananas or the fact there were no organic lemons or fair-trade tea or unrefined sugar. In the 1980s this was radical thinking and she was relentless in this small campaign of hers. Thirty years later, standing in my glaze room, I found myself thinking about the materials I was using. I had a room full of crushed and ground earth materials; where did they all come from? What was the human and environmental cost? I did some research and discovered that many of the materials I used are also integral to the production of modern tech like mobile phones and computers. It is easy to forget or even realise that these advanced pieces of technology are made entirely from raw earth materials.

To highlight this, I decided to add them to some of my pots during firing, placing a mobile phone, a Nokia 3310, onto the surface of a glazed pot and then firing it to 1300 OC to see if any of the rare earth minerals would reveal themselves in the glaze. They did, most notably in a piece with the motherboard from a computer placed on top of it, visible in the unique colours leaching from the circuitry into the glaze. With this body of work, I wanted to highlight the cost of modern living and consumerism on the world and its inhabitants. We as humans have drawn from the earth and created some truly incredible objects of beauty and ingenuity. Our compulsion to make and innovate has led to some of our greatest accolades and darkest secrets.

Made around 2010, these pieces were first exhibited at Corvi-Mora in London for my solo show ‘Rare Earth’ in 2015.