This work evolved from my response to the Covid epidemic, which was caused by a virus that I contracted very early in 2020 before anyone was aware of the signifiers of the disease. It concerned ideas surrounding human contact and the “space of meeting” between two people. The work Memories of Touch is a ceramic commentary on the post-human; it uses “the hand” and “clay” as metaphor for the human. It asks questions: Where is the hand of the maker located? Who is the other?
When we meet, we make physical contact – the outer edges of two bodies overcoming their limits manifested in the handshake. In its essence it makes physical the void that exists between two individuals when they encounter one another. The work not merely engages with digital means of but complements those with analogue modes of making; it exists in the liminal space between contemporary modes of digital manufacture (“mechanical reproduction”) and ancient modes of hand-creation.
But, what is it to be isolated and create that imprint in clay alone?
