Alison Shelton Brown

Bio

I am a multi-disciplinary artist working primarily with porcelain and mixed media which is often sourced during my daily walks. I live in an old chapel situated in a green leafy valley near the south west coast of England, and my studio is in an old piggery. I studied ceramics at Camberwell School of Art in London in the early 1980s, then returned to education in 2015 achieving an MA in Ceramics at Bath School of Art. In 2020, I was able to show and wear some of my graduation pieces at Collect, the international craft fair in London.

Statement

Making with meaning is fundamental to me; exploring the consequences of the human touch on our world. I am an interdisciplinary artist whose butterfly brain and bowerbird eye inform intuitive hands helping them play with those fluttering thoughts through ceramics, metal, and textiles, encouraging a certain tactile curiosity. By distilling an idea and eliminating the unnecessary, the essence of a form is divined; a simple joy is revealed.

Inspiration is often derived from ethnographic collections, where amulets are reimagined in metal-studded porcelain, filled with intention and spangled with desire. Elsewhere, rusty wire woven like a scribbled drawing contains - or protects - a shoal of wriggling clay fish. I make objects that adorn and ornament a person or a place.

Performative tactile mixed media has an ambiguity that comfortably inhabits liminal spaces for both the wall and the body, thereby producing an intimate experience of sculptural works, that challenge perceived boundaries where the sculpture is untouchable, but jewellery is haptic art. I play with objects which are undecidable.

A truism of American artist Jenny Holzer resonates with me: "all things are delicately interconnected". There is a circularity in life and how I work. Themes long forgotten suddenly re-emerge from a chrysalis, while the threads of tangible mark-making, the assemblage of multiples, and our impact on the natural world continually weave, embed, and cast shadows. 

CV      

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