Juliet Ferguson-Rose: Selected works, 2023-2024
My practice assembles personal, prehistorical and topographical references. As an artist and sculptor primarily working in clay, I am making sculptures as both maker and ‘archaeologist’ of collaged space, time and objects.
Through excavating, mixing, cutting, compressing and attaching clay, I unearth and create layers of surface and meaning. Drawing upon this broad visual language of making, clay components are grouped to expose topographical portals, where narratives are arranged and rearranged, becoming an assemblage of relics preserved in time, totems to future-past narratives.
This approach parallels the exhilaration of the archaeologist excavating, with the process of an artist who mines concepts from the recesses of their mind, both seeking to stumble upon the unknown. The language of the clay itself is of prime importance, comprised of fine particles of compressed amalgam of mineral, flora and fauna. Mixed and hidden layers reveal the material’s tactile nature and the human need to create, preserve and remember. I create works that aspire to delight myself and the viewer’s curiosity, reminding us that no layer is the same in the process of discovery.
Assemblage (solo show) at Frestonian Gallery, 2024
Frestonian Gallery 2 hosted the first solo exhibition of London-based sculptor Juliet Ferguson-Rose. A recent graduate of the Royal College of Art, Ferguson-Rose works predominantly in ceramics, creating works that are literally and metaphorically multi-layered. Her confident and technically skilled use of glazes and firing techniques is resulting already in a highly personal and distinctive aesthetic language. The concept of a narrative of time and place being held and preserved within the work is a recurrent theme in Ferguson-Rose’s practice. In recent works such as Forum and Threshold III (both 2023) the impressions of found objects and textures gives an identity and place-in-time to otherwise universal forms.
Selected works, 2023
Captions
- Assemblage (solo show) at Frestonian Gallery, 2024
Collections I, II, III, 2024, Dimensions variable
Collections I, 2024, Ceramic, 10 x 18 x 10 cm
Ouroboros, 2024, ceramic, 165 x 135 x 7 cm
Threshold IV, 2024, reduction fired ceramic, 42 x 42 x 5.5 cm
Forum, 2023, Ceramic, 59 x 42 x 5.5 cm
Threshold V, 2023, ceramic, 42 x 42 x 5.5 cm
Threshold V, 2023, ceramic, 42 x 42 x 5.5 cm Detail - Royal College of Art Degree Show, 2023
Assemblage of Relics Preserved in Time II, 2023, Ceramic, 120 x 120 cm
Serpentiform, 2023, reduction fired ceramic, 127 x 42 x 5.5 cm - WIP, RCA, 2023
Royal College of Art work in progress, 2023, Glazed Stoneware Ceramic, Bronze, Found Objects, Gold Leaf, 210 x 110 cm
