A L I S O N W E S T
C U R R E N T W O R K
K I R S T Y A D A M S
Kirsty Adam’s work is both functional and holds aesthetic meaning, retaining the spontaneity and delicacy intrinsic to making on the potters’ wheel. A Japanese comb tool is used to create and enhance the throwing lines. Her Icelandic collection is the culmination of a research trip to Iceland to express the ‘otherworldliness’ of the landscape.
Kirsty is an award-winning ceramicist currently working from her studio in Newcastle upon Tyne. She originally trained at Brighton Art College and then on the potters’ wheel in Japan. She has developed a personal approach to throwing on the wheel using porcelain clay, to produce unique pieces for the home.
Exhibitions and Events
Being Human
6th March - 19th April 2020
C U R R E N T W O R K
Unit89
“The instinctive emotional response to the process of growth, repetition, duality, a constant push and pull between the opposites of order and chaos, planned and spontaneous, perfect and imperfect are ideas that drive my creativity. Having a background in architecture, the appreciation of surrounding environment is the starting point of every piece. Their design is defined by a set of guiding principles and a process of response, carefully curating a conversation with the space that surrounds them. It is about how the pieces answer to their environment as well as the material they are created from rather than how they look on their own and it is designing with voids and shadows as much as with material elements.”
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“What started my exploration in clay was its honesty, tactility and vulnerability. Through working with it I began to start wondering about
what creates an emotional human connection and what is it that makes us human. We are all based on algorithmic DNA, the same in
principle, yet everyone is unique with the addition of unpredictable and spontaneous events that shape us to who we are.”
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“This innate clash of algorithmic and chaotic that we feel instinctively within us, the ever-present duality is my constant curiosity. I also strive to preserve in my pieces that sense of vulnerability and human connection through leaving in it my marks, gestures and fingerprints.”
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“My work is made entirely by hand in unglazed porcelain with delicate metal details. I develop additive processes of accumulation of gestures, materials and elements and then create a series of pieces through the same process, but with each being completely unique, though different material response and slight variation of gestures. Putting those pieces together creates a conversation between them emphasizing simultaneously the similarities in their differences and differences in their similarities.”
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Ula Saniawa of Unit89 is an award-winning ceramic artist based in London.
Gallery Collection
Image Gallery
