poison pen

Katherine Morling

Poison Pen (2010)

porcelain with black stain

Poison Pen forms only a small part of what is a much larger installation [Out of the House: as seen at Collect 2011, Saatchi Gallery] of monochromatic ceramic objects.

There is a whimsical theatricality to Morling's ceramics. They are at once nostalgic; familiar; fragile; and mundane, and succeed in becoming a vacant representation of their former selves. 

Ceramics is a good imitator of other materials and is adept at taking on board a desired form, which makes it an obvious choice when wanting to replicate an object. It also offers a strong sense of history and tradition, something that, it stands to reason, is missing from modern day processes and materials. Slip-cast it can be solid or hollow which can also add to the solidity or fragility of the piece.

The idea of 'hinting at past times' is something that sits well with my narrative of obsolescence, and the reproduction of objects in ceramics that have simultaneously both a comfortable familiarity and an uneasy blankness is where my current thinking lies. It combines that which is present, through the form in which it takes, and that which is other, in the absence of the actual object.