Chloe Monks, Portfolio of Practice

Chloe Monks

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Artist Statement

Contents Artist Statement

1

Portfolio Foreword

2

Fluidity

3 - 5

Joints

6

Macro & Colour

7 - 8

Models

9-10

Fragments & Structures

11 - 14

End Notes

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I am fascinated by the changing state of a substance. Time takes centre stage in my works: they appear to have a precariousness, the sense of not being fixed. In a moment, a work could collapse and possibly resolve itself into a pure form.

My practice is heavily rooted in research, particularly into the core fluidity of glaze and flux.

Often objects are realised into a series of pieces or are the continual development of a single piece. Through persistent innovation of techniques such as the testing of glazes, props, frameworks, and varying kiln atmospheres, my work embraces the opportunity of chance and effect. It allows me to continue developing a visual language in which ceramic materials are inverted in their function - glaze becomes integral to the structure, not merely a surface decoration.

Although I speak of chance and effect, the foundations of the work are carefully calculated, through a systematic methodology of planning, preparation and documentation. That being said, my making process leaves room for improvisation - knowing how I want a piece to operate, but not completely knowing where it may end up.

As a result, my practice actively blends physical form with responses to phenomenological thought. Phenomenology continues to be redefined, but we can understand it as an attempt to describe the basic structures of human experience. I have taken significant influence from the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, which suggests that information we’ve loaded onto ourselves brings an undercurrent of our being into reality. I have also ruminated over contemporary philosopher Ian Bogost’s belief that as humans we mainly think through things.

A question that arises throughout his writing is: does the object have its own experience?

Or is the object only activated by a human experience? My ceramic practice is a physical manifestation and investigation into my own relationship with the purity of experience. A question reflected in my work is whether there are any experiences that are free from preassumptions.

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Foreword This portfolio serves to portray a collection of the works that I have produced during my time in the workshops at the Royal College of Art, and the experimental practices that I have been developing since the lockdown measures, imposed as a result of COVID-19. The themes that I began looking at the start of my second year have evolved as the current situation dictated physical production limitations. I have taken this as an opportunity to expand my research into different alchemical materials beyond ceramic practice.

What started in first year as a physical investigation into the philosophical practice of phenomenology; forging connections between me and the material, has progressed into a consideration of object orientated ontology, questioning what it is like to be a ‘thing’1? How can uncategorisable objects be better understood in connection to ourselves? Drawing upon Bruno Latours’ notion of the imbroglio; ‘a confusion in which it’s never clear who and what is acting’2 and how our way of interpreting this is ‘bound to human knowledge’3.

Simultaneously, I have been drawn towards methods of production that utilise the aesthetic of chaos and confusion. Initially this began with the testing and production of ceramic materials that would go through alchemical transformations in the kiln; thick glazes melting and being captured in states of fluidity or solid clay objects bubbling and cratering into textured sinews holding other fragments together.

Despite the fact that this required precise and calculated actions both in the production and the firing of these objects, reflection upon this work only inspired me further to research notions of fragmentation and chance aesthetics.

I have aimed to maintain these concepts within material investigation during this period of lockdown. The lack of access to a ceramic workshop has led me to investigate other methods of producing objects that balance the fine line between unity and disorder; I am aiming to build up fragments alongside each other to, using Brian Dillon’s words, create a ‘bristling sort of pattern’4. This has primarily been through research into crystalline structures. I have been finding materials that can grow out from themselves. I have taken great inspiration from conversing with Glen Onwin, the scottish landscape and installation artist, on this matter and have aimed to also investigate how ‘the recovery of dissolved substances’5 can form new structures. From the photographs within this portfolio it is clear to see how I have assembled parts to create large chaotic ceramics forms. The production of the crystalline structures mimics this same action; smaller deliberate and controlled structures convened into one larger mass - a world of fragmentation that lacks cohesion yet forms a unity of objects that are barely hanging onto one another.

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Fluidity Here, the clay acts as an armature - it is no longer the ground for the glaze as surface, but instead a support for glaze as form. The alchemical and viscous properties of glazes are exploited to their maximum potential; sticking to objects, sticking objects together and flowing loosely through open space. The firing process and clay frame has allowed these meticulously calculated concoctions to reach a flow state, forming a focus upon a state of permanent fluidity. The frame contains and delimits something that would otherwise fluctuate in a state of free transformation.

Fluidity, stoneware, glaze, 10 x 40 x 15 cm, Photo Credit, Ji-Hyun Song

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Moving from liquid fluidity we come to body fluidity. These bodies of clay are imitating the qualities of a glaze without completely losing its shape, at the same time it’s slimy and rippling like an alive creature would be which surfaces feelings of repulsion. A fluid body sees states of collapse as the carefully designed shapes have been handed to the fluxing glaze that is within, leading to the question of scale. How big can these subjects become before melting in on themselves?

Cobalt Ripple, porcelain, cobalt, 15 x 20 x 7 cm

D-Flux, porcelain, glaze, 13 x 10 x 8 cm

‘What mode of being is symbolized by the slimy? I see first that it is the homogeneity and the imitation of liquidity. A slimy substance like pitch is an aberrant fluid. At first, with the appearance of a fluid it manifests to us a being which is everywhere fleeing and yet everywhere similar to itself…’6

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During lockdown I have experimented with different alchemical substances which has led me to the documentation of time based transformations. As with my glaze research, documentation photography introduces a new vision of the work; the changing of scale from micro to macro allows for the discovery of information unseen to the human eye. This methodology rapidly became appropriate for the capturing of ephemeral moments within the growth of crystals. These dry substances deliquesce, overtime solutions had a constant change of mobilisation crystallising and growing from the inside, out of objects, wrapping itself around things such as terracotta.

10/04/2020, 13:00, first growth of copper sulphate crystal

12/04/2020, 13:54, terracotta, copper sulphate

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Joints Works are growing as glaze sticks to objects to then stick objects together.

Precarious joints bring a visual gap to see fluid without a ground surface. Simple shapes are used to emphasize the function that is at play.

Interlock, porcelain, crystalline glaze

Interlock, porcelain, black glaze, 30 x 6 x 3cm

‘Slime is the bridging material – oozing itself forth – the connection, the join, the glue, the paste, the solidification of unison.’7

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Macro & Colour Having worked on a glaze library and focusing on crystals in lockdown, I looked at what structures are formed within a surface. What microenvironment lives within it? By being aware of these structures I have created forms that are similar, forming abstract amalgamous shapes. The macro photography of crystals is born out of the documentation of works throughout the year. The crystals emulate the glazes themselves; how they develop in the kiln, themes of alchemy and substance from fluid to solid, solid to fluid. Finally the visual aesthetic, they heavily connect in the depth of texture and colour.

08/05/2020, 18:25, copper sulphate

08/05/2020, 18:28, copper sulphate

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I have followed Glen Onwins way of working; ‘I want the work to exist in a microcosmic macrocosmic way; to get as much information from the larger images of the work as you do from the detail. It is important that you know the detail is there, but you should stand back from the work and view the whole work with that knowledge.’8 With this in mind details and works hold a scaleless sense about them. The glazes I have opted to pursue and develop further throughout the year have all been highly textured and colourful; with a particular appreciation for the rich colours that are achievable through gas firing. These glazes have an overall colour, but close inspection reveals swirling complex worlds of colour, mimicking what Glen expresses.

It is these gas glaze tests that I’ve altered into a repeated textured image, since lockdown, as a way to try and use this macro/micro notion upon 3D models that i have worked on.

BR/JR3, terracotta, gas fired

BR/JR2, terracotta gas fired

JR3/2, terracotta, gas fired

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Models

These 3D models are further portraying what may have come with a studio practice. Here I have modelled a small piece which is ‘glazed’ with my most recent gas glaze tests.

Digital Prototype

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Digital Prototype

Further explorations of textures and colour were applied to a 3D model of a structure I had assembled before lockdown. The warping pieces give an idea of further movement that may have occured if this piece had endured a high firing.

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Fragments & Structures Fluidity on the outside, fluidity within a body and fluidity creating joints, the combination creates an interlocking web of complexity. Having only created a small wall version of this piece, I would’ve liked to have followed it up by expanding in width and height. Twisting the focal point to an impossible amount of fragments only just holding onto one another through a strong string of glaze.

Variable Web, porcelain, glaze, 25 x 21 x 10cm

Digital prototype, smaller piece replicated 11

The question continues; How many fragments can be separate from each other until they become one? Or if a form is so fragmented, at what point is the form lost? These following frzagmentary structures bring phenomenology into perspective with the human state as well as object orientated ontology.

Digital prototype, smaller piece replicated.

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Digital prototype This work aims to display multiplication of ‘Epoch of Simultaneity’ without the added movement and impossibility of replication in a piece that could have been physically made.

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Epoch of Simultaneity, Digital Prototype.

Fluxes are only just holding it together. By making it in series, these pieces are vulnerable, laid bare for viewers to truly understand the language it is trying to speak in a finished state. I find the power of precariousness makes us see how easily something can fall apart but also on the off chance how one of the many might just hold itself up and keep itself together. Referring to the precariousness of the human state alongside the question of, what is this thing experiencing?

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End Notes 1

Bogost, I. (2012) Alien Phenomenology or What it’s like to be a Thing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. p. 24

2

Bogost, I. (2012) p.19

3

Bogost, I. (2012) p.19

4

Plitt, C and Bright, O. (2017) Essays with Brian Dillon [Podcast]. 17 May. Available at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/literary-friction-es says-with-brian-dillon/id1000387053?i=1000385513196 (Accessed: 20 May 2020)

5

Onwin, G. (1978) The Recovery of Dissolved Substances

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Sartre, J-P. (1943) Being and Nothingness. London: Routledge. p.627

7

Sartre, J-P. (1943) p.620

8

Onwin, G. (1978)

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