Sophie Milne: Street Side

This month, bottles, beakers and bowls by ceramacist Sophie Milne have taken over the window space in enCOUNTER. How many bottles you say? Quite a few indeed... and all in a pleasing palette of cream, mint and an assortment of blues (so far we've spotted robin's egg blue, cerulean blue and prussian blue)



And now a word from the artist:

Street Side is a body of work referencing my surrounding urban environment, directly responding to my previous nature-inspired ceramics and incorporating a multiplicity of meanings.

Bottle forms, with their constricted internal space, represent a society overwhelmed by infrastructure and throttled by the pervasive presence of its constructions. In contrast, sgraffito lines take pleasure in the rhythms and quirks of the patterns this infrastructure incidentally creates. Other forms, such as the ceramic insulator cups, recognise the beauty often found in industrially designed objects and in this sense Street Side becomes a handmade salute to industry.

Sophie's bottles feature telephone poles - or if you like, 'totems of 20th century communication' - at the base, creating that effect of whizzing by on car trips. The drawings are done through sgraffito, which is a technique that is produced by "applying to an unfired ceramic surface two successive layers of contrasting slip, and then in either case scratching so as to produce an outline drawing."

Sophie has also written a very lovely post about her exhibition on her blog which includes some sneaky pics of Carmel and yours truly hard at work (or is it hardly working?) Be sure to check it out!

Street Side will be on display 24 hours a day, 7 days a week till 24 May.