The Shape of Loss
The Shape of Loss (2026) Installation View. RuptureXHIBIT, Hampton Hill, London
Excerpt from artist's talk (RuptureXHIBIT, March 28th 2026)
RF: The clay monolith sculpture was based on an idea that’d been gestating since the start of 2025, about the relationship of artists and their material. The idea was to create a large clay body, equivalent in size to a person, to represent the reciprocal relationship. Often artists talk about the agency of the material, and the way once you are ‘in the flow’, the material almost seems to make the piece itself.
I became very interested in psychic projection of intentions onto an inert object. At the time I was caring for my elderly mother who had late-stage Alzheimer’s. I was questioning how much of the interaction was based on my memory of my mother when she was well. Was what I ‘saw’ of ‘my mother’ just a projection?
Unfortunately due to practical constraints I had to shelve the clay monolith idea for over a year, until the residency ‘Exploring Loss’ at RuptureXHIBIT. The large studio/exhibition space was ideal for ‘The Clay Monolith’ to come into being. The raw clay sculpture had such an extraordinary presence, it became central to five creative aspects of the residency.
1) Exploring connection to materials, to the mother earth our connection as humans to the materiality of our source...clay/earth... the cycle of life and the lifelong process of constant transformation, creation and destruction, and renewal of the actual self.
2) As an object of devotion, a tribute, a kind of memorial for the projection of love, the mother-child relationship, and enactment of reciprocal loving care of former child as adult to crone mother.... in the durational performance... tending to the needs of the clay body, to keep it ‘alive’ by periodically misting it with water, saturating and wringing out damp sheets to place over 'the body'... massaging in buckets of damp clay slip like a nourishing moisturising emollient, or embalming cream.
3) In workshops it became a symbol of the scale of accumulative loss, a focus, which 'held' our feelings. It became an interface with the haptic language of the subconscious (brainstem). It was liberating for participants to work at human scale with others in group workshops (for artists and the recently bereaved.) The monolith became a focus for feelings, and by projecting onto the object, it enabled creative ‘Clean Clay’ work about loss.
4) It served as a participatory sculpture, evolving to represent the unconscious form, shape and feel of loss. This linked embodied understanding through muscle memory of the hand to show the shape of loss through the metaphor of pottery. The connection that pots have to the human body, the pot’s shoulder, waist, hip, and belly recall our own curves. In this incarnation shapes thrown on the potter’s wheel during performance were ripped, deformed and torn to represent the effect of loss then embedded into the clay body.
Water was poured from a raw clay watering can is symbolic of both emotion, amniotic fluid, and tears.
The effect is of a primordial swampy form...or an underwater otherworldly coral head...
5) A representation of eternal loss, the beyond-human Gaia earth mother reveals her layers of geological strata suggested by the horizontal banding inside the hand thrown vessels.
The Shape of Loss is constructed from a four-part metal armature, casters, expanding foam, waterproof paint, raw clay.
Dimensions variable, approx 250x140cm
RF: The clay monolith sculpture was based on an idea that’d been gestating since the start of 2025, about the relationship of artists and their material. The idea was to create a large clay body, equivalent in size to a person, to represent the reciprocal relationship. Often artists talk about the agency of the material, and the way once you are ‘in the flow’, the material almost seems to make the piece itself.
I became very interested in psychic projection of intentions onto an inert object. At the time I was caring for my elderly mother who had late-stage Alzheimer’s. I was questioning how much of the interaction was based on my memory of my mother when she was well. Was what I ‘saw’ of ‘my mother’ just a projection?
Unfortunately due to practical constraints I had to shelve the clay monolith idea for over a year, until the residency ‘Exploring Loss’ at RuptureXHIBIT. The large studio/exhibition space was ideal for ‘The Clay Monolith’ to come into being. The raw clay sculpture had such an extraordinary presence, it became central to five creative aspects of the residency.
1) Exploring connection to materials, to the mother earth our connection as humans to the materiality of our source...clay/earth... the cycle of life and the lifelong process of constant transformation, creation and destruction, and renewal of the actual self.
2) As an object of devotion, a tribute, a kind of memorial for the projection of love, the mother-child relationship, and enactment of reciprocal loving care of former child as adult to crone mother.... in the durational performance... tending to the needs of the clay body, to keep it ‘alive’ by periodically misting it with water, saturating and wringing out damp sheets to place over 'the body'... massaging in buckets of damp clay slip like a nourishing moisturising emollient, or embalming cream.
3) In workshops it became a symbol of the scale of accumulative loss, a focus, which 'held' our feelings. It became an interface with the haptic language of the subconscious (brainstem). It was liberating for participants to work at human scale with others in group workshops (for artists and the recently bereaved.) The monolith became a focus for feelings, and by projecting onto the object, it enabled creative ‘Clean Clay’ work about loss.
4) It served as a participatory sculpture, evolving to represent the unconscious form, shape and feel of loss. This linked embodied understanding through muscle memory of the hand to show the shape of loss through the metaphor of pottery. The connection that pots have to the human body, the pot’s shoulder, waist, hip, and belly recall our own curves. In this incarnation shapes thrown on the potter’s wheel during performance were ripped, deformed and torn to represent the effect of loss then embedded into the clay body.
Water was poured from a raw clay watering can is symbolic of both emotion, amniotic fluid, and tears.
The effect is of a primordial swampy form...or an underwater otherworldly coral head...
5) A representation of eternal loss, the beyond-human Gaia earth mother reveals her layers of geological strata suggested by the horizontal banding inside the hand thrown vessels.
The Shape of Loss is constructed from a four-part metal armature, casters, expanding foam, waterproof paint, raw clay.
Dimensions variable, approx 250x140cm