deep green orbit by nicholas lees
nicholas lees
deep green orbit
parian porcelain, soluble copper & cobalt
16.5 x 16.5 cm
£2,350.00

This work is about perception. I am interested in the ephemerality and uncertainty of perception. Our visual experience of reality is conditional upon relationships of light, space and body. This body of work originates in an attempt to manifest qualities of shadows as representations of the hinterland between two and three dimensions and between presence and absence, so making a material penumbra. I focus on an exploration of the vessel as an abstract form, considering the relationship between the space which is contained and the space which is occupied. These ideas are also informed by a lifetime of looking at the same stretch of Scottish coastline, bringing the realisation that the constant shift of tide, weather and light mean the experience of perception is forever transient.
My aesthetic combines minimalism with complexity and the origination of my ideas and works is rooted in thinking through material and process.

The ceramic works are made from Parian, a porcelain clay developed in Stoke on Trent in the 19th century to imitate marble . The pieces are thickly thrown on the wheel, dried slowly and evenly before the fins are formed through lathe turning of the leather hard clay before firing. This making draws on precedents from the industrial production of electrical insulators to the use of throwing and lathe turning by Wedgwood since the 18th century. The introduction of colour is inspired by my works on paper with ink, in which the interaction between wet and dry is used as a parallel for movement and the uncertainty of perception. Colouring is done with soluble metal salts applied through a combination of saturation and evaporation so that the colour travels through the form and concentrates on the edges. 
 

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