ADVENTURES WITH SALVAGED MATERIALS, EXPERIMENTAL MORTAR + TEXTURE, TEXTURE, TEXTURE…

These experimental pieces consider what happens after disruption: how living systems adapt, materials recombine, and unfamiliar ecologies emerge from environments transformed by human activity.

Working primarily with ceramics, I construct speculative organisms between marine life, fungi, geological formations and imagined evolutionary bodies. Forms are accumulated rather than predetermined, appearing grown rather than designed. Fragments collide, attach and proliferate, blurring distinctions between organism and habitat.

My work draws on ecological research where human waste, extraction and biological systems become entangled: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, mycelium trained to digest disposable nappies, and threatened deep-sea glass sponge habitats.

Material and concept are inseparable. Porcelain and Parian coexist with salvaged ceramic fragments, found materials, marine-derived bioplastics and a low-fire ceramic mortar I developed to join previously fired components. Repair does not restore an object to its earlier state; fracture becomes an opportunity for transformation.

Although rooted in ecological damage, the work considers nature’s unruly capacity to continue: to colonise, mutate and reorganise. These speculative ecosystems occupy a space between optimism and unease, imagining waste becoming habitat and distinctions between natural and artificial matter collapsing.

What might life become next?