Output details

Overshoot and Collapse. A group of 12 sculptures (clay, wood, sand, steel, paint) created while the Newcastle University Norma Lipman Research Fellow in Ceramic Sculpture that explore clay’s facility for marking gesture and emotions within a sculptural surface. Shown in a solo presentation, Overshoot and Collapse, Globe Gallery, Newcastle and group exhibitions Present Volume, The Space, Deutsche Bank, London, and The Painting Room, Transition Gallery, London.

This outcome of a year-long fellowship aimed to explore new approaches to ceramic sculpture. This research involved the development of a body of chiefly figurative ceramic works, sometimes in combination with other materials, and explored the use of the clay-surfaces of the sculpture (as opposed to the overall form) as a vehicle for conveying expression.

Cuddon is concerned with questioning sculptural orthodoxies that have traditionally underpinned much figurative sculpture made in clay, e.g. assumptions about underlying structure, where works are built up over an interior armature akin to the skeletal structure of the human body. Using thin skins of clay 'wrapped' into partly articulated forms, the sculptures explore the image through a series of (often seemingly provisional) 'impressions' rather than through attempts at resolved renderings.

The significance of the research lies in Cuddon’s distinctive treatment of clay – it is hand-modelled through a process of pummelling, fingering, cajoling, without the use of supports and gradually built into a form that is then fired and painted.

Painting the work white attempts to neutralize the raw and unwieldy surface of the ceramic. The blank emulsion acts as a screen, desensitising or filtering the concentrated sense of intimacy clay and its direct handling carries. This technique was revised in later work as Cuddon introduces colour.

In some works Cuddon punches holes through the clay’s surface, rupturing the continuous fingered surface and signalling to the hollow interior. Whether this is achieved using a neat almost mechanical cut or a rash tear, the intention is to emphasise the taut and parched quality of the painted ceramic surface.

The research was conceived within the context of a generation of artists working with ceramic but concerned with exploring the expressive qualities of clay rather than with issues related to ceramics as a material aligned to craft practices.