Collection: Jessica Smith

@jessicabarbarasmith
jessicasmithartist.com

Jessica Smith is an emerging artist who works with clay and ceramic processes. Her practice is concerned with how ancient and alternative methods of firing can be utilised to address future problems related to sustainability and the environment. 

Smith has been investigating the idea of her ceramic works as holders of time, entwining memory, place and experience. The strata-like coiled layers resemble the epic geological memory of time in material form.

The medium of clay and the processes to create ceramics are ancient. Ceramic remnants discovered in archaeological digs tell the stories of past societies, civilisations, and individuals. Smith explores these ideas in a contemporary context, considering the archival nature of ceramics and her art as future archaeology.  

Due to the memory and malleability of clay, fired ceramic works encapsulate and encase their moments of creation. Coiling especially, is a meditative and reflective experience for her. As Smith coils, she entwines the material with the emotive, exploring the associations between the Entwinings and personal memories of place and time.

Smith achieved second place in the Shelley Simpson Ceramics Prize, Mud Australia (2022), and was a finalist in the Gosford Ceramic Art Prize (2021).