3448, 2024
Unfired black clay, 90 hand-moulded forms
3448 is made from black clay shaped in China and left unfired. Its surface is polished using a small pebble that the artist’s mother once collected during a trip with her husband. After her passing, the pebble was kept by the artist’s sister and later borrowed by the artist for this work, becoming the central tool in its formation.
The surface is polished repeatedly, from one to ninety cycles, mirroring the age at which the artist’s mother passed away. Each cycle of rubbing marks time, attention, and physical effort. The pebble becomes an active agent that carries touch, pressure, and duration across generations.
Through this process, the ceramic absorbs traces of contact and transmission between the mother, sister, and artist. Care is enacted not through representation, but through sustained physical labour and repetition.
By refusing to fire the clay, the work remains materially open and vulnerable. It stays responsive to touch and time. Memory is not sealed into a finished object, but continues to circulate through matter, gesture, and ongoing exchange.
