Jeanne Francois

Jeanne François (b.1999) is a french ceramist and sculptor whose work revolves around wild clays and the exploration of the land. She encountered clay as a child, playing with mud, rocks, modelling and raku firing with her dad in the back garden of their house in the Alps. After briefly studying literature, she moved to Paris and obtained a BA degree in Object Design and Ceramics, with first class honours. She is currently graduating from a 2-year MA in Ceramics & Glass at the Royal College of Art, London.

In 2020, she collaborated with the collective Barro Pequeno, based in Santiago de Chile, to create a collection of vases for children made from local clay. Since 2021, she has been working alongside industrial groups and designers’ collectives such as ECT and Golden Earth to reclaim excavated soils in her ceramics, from Paris to London. In 2022, she spent the summer in art residency Sachaqa Centro de Arte, in the Peruvian Amazon. Immersed in the Kechwa culture, she dug into the landscape while beginning a journey of experimentation with performance firings.

Those who have a memory are able to live in the fragile present moment. Those who have none don't live anywhere.

Nostalgia for the Light, Patricio Gùzman

I work with wild clays as a medium to evoke the memory of the lands and homes I have lived in. I spent the past year digging in the shoreline of the river Thames as a way to understand the essence of London. I followed the track of the clay until it drew its map. The river Thames, its clay tinted with oil, a heap of stinking residues. Earth speaks for our memories. The earth, that is a material, is also a place. And I have found that this place is everywhere, so I kept on digging.

What if I only have memory for one image?

The Sea Close By, Albert Camus

What matters to me is my relationship with the land. How I embody it, dwell in it, blurring the limits of my body with its territory. I am made of landscapes. As I move through different locations, the houses I lived in are distorted in my memory. These are images of childhood homes, of homes we borrow, homes we build ourselves in, homes we leave.

This year I have been thinking about remains. About how we build ourselves despite our environment and because of it, how we abandon layers, put pieces back together, recraft ourselves in a constant loss of home.

I wondered if I was dealing with a house with no beginning and no end.

Real Estate, Deborah Levy

This one is named after Albert Camus’s hometown, Alger. I was reading the short novel ‘The sea close by’, evoking the author’s nostalgia of the native land. 'I felt like a mast snapping in the wind'. Camus’ embodiment of his land is vital. He holds on the the memory of it to stand exile.

Medium:

Terracotta, wild clays

Size:

31x31x32

This is a modular piece, or a landscape of its own. Playing with the dots of colour coming from wild clays, I am drawing the memory of the place it comes from.

Medium:

Terracotta, wild clays

Size:

22x22x22

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This wall piece is layered in different combinations of the wild clay I dig out of the Thames river. In collapsing on itself in the firing, it created new dimensions of lecture within the frame.

Medium:

Terracotta, wild clays

Size:

25x24x13

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This piece is named after ‘Le bateau ivre’, poem of Arthur Rimbaud and part of ‘A season in hell’. It is partly a house, partly a boat, sailing on the waters of the river Thames. 'The rivers let me go as I pleased'.

Medium:

Terracotta, wild clays

Size:

15x20x25

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This piece explores the technique of mosaïque through the medium of wild clays. Tied together, meshed, the clays flux, melt, leaving the house’s shell.

Medium:

Terracotta, wild clays

Size:

22x22x38

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Papers – Layered sheets of clay echoing the pattern of mosaique.

Map – This tile is a mesh of ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ bodies of clays. The weak ones have left their frame while melting. Now the frame is incomplete, hollowed. The clays have created their very own map.

Tile for a fox – A tile reminiscent of the mark making for the ‘Fox project’ from last year collaborating with Alex Aitken and Graeme Smith. Thinking of the authenticity of trace and building an emotion within a frame.

Map (II) – Slowly deforming the walls, opening up new spaces, new fragments. Letting the clay do its job.

Borders – This marks a new perspective in the way I think about walls and volumes. Looking at ways to accumulate, mesh, while skinning the walls of the structures.

Medium:

Terracotta, wild clays

Size:

Various, about 22x22 each

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Getting bigger with mosaique making and aiming at simplifying the canvas.

Medium:

Terracotta, wild clays

Size:

22x22x44

abstract clay contemporary experimental fluidity identity landscapes mark-making materiality memory ruins sculpture

These bricks were part of a bigger piece I made and dismantled for the Onion garden, in London. They are entirely made of wild clay, without the support of terracotta. Thus they flopped on themselves and invented their own shape. They remind me of mountains.