An element of attraction and repulsion is a recurring element in my work. These clay animals are very detailed – the fragile bones, the flimsy feathers, the sunken fur – invite one to peer closely, the delicate handwork is entic-ing, it’s attractive but is at the same time a hideous tableau – a squished animal, it’s guts squashed out, bones picked bare by crows, eyes and jawbones mutilated and pulled apart. Beautiful but re-pugnant. I often find myself judging the squashed animal on the merits it’s squashedness – in terms of claying it I mean - and at the same time, each time I scrape a beast from the asphalt I am con-fronted by the casualness with which they are left behind, an ‘unavoidable’ by-product of car-culture. The intense attention they receive whist they are modelled in a sense also contributes to the work, attention for that which was abandoned so casually. And the fact that someone has spent hours por-ing over a rotting cadaver seems to play a role in the way the viewer experiences the work. That they are earthenware lends them something of a monument, an ode to the animal.
Ceramic Roadkill
Ongoing series of squashed animals in clay
These squashed animals killed by cars I scrape up and keep in the freezer long enough to model them in clay.
