Alison Clark

Baffling intricate ceramic structure, balanced and stacked where the container and the contained are twisted together

Alison Clark studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and is currently based in London where she leads her own Architectural and Interior Design practice with projects throughout Europe. In 2009 Alison completed a Diploma in History of Art and Art World Practice at Christie’s London. She has a particular interest in the commissioning and placement of large-scale sculptures within the built environment and had a long-standing association with the Cass Sculpture Foundation, where she was a Trustee. Alison is currently completing her Master’s degree in Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art, London.

As an Architect who builds in clay my work inhabits a complex web of interwoven space between interior and exterior, an interface of mediation and conversation providing a new zone of endless possibilities. My webs begin with a line, a line of clay given form by threading through my fingers or perhaps wrapping around my wrists, held momentarily and then released to give intimate form to buildable components.

These components, once balanced and stacked, form baffling intricate structures, regions of non-orientation where the container and the contained are twisted together with no beginning and no end. With the heat of transformation, the structures warp and shift to give unpredictable form and only fix their tentative connection through glazed pathways, resulting in a vibrant fragile stability.

These are structures of indescribable presence where viewers may conjure up nests or cloud formations, rich with embedded memory, the chance of a secret rendezvous within porous boundaries of ambiguity. This ambiguity of interpretation offers new ways of evaluating what we think we already know: the challenge is to reach within the complex void for new ways of being human in our profoundly fragmented age.