Jenny Southam
Jenny Southam | Ceramics | Devon
Jenny studied Fine Art at Bristol where she developed her practice in Sculpture, gravitating towards bronze. When she moved to Devon she embraced clay as her medium and for thirty years her family, home, garden and studio have formed an integrated whole.
The ideas for her hand-built and hand-decorated figurative ceramic sculptures draw from the realms of European and English mythology, from domestic incidents and rituals and from a rich seam of stories handed down through her ancestral Nordic forebears.
Her figures are often placed within a pew, a bower, a garden or an enclosure of trees. Many suggest moments when men, women and animals are frozen in a critical, dramatic juxtaposition. Her recent works are tableaux inspired by her fascination with vintage knitting patterns.
Jenny predominantly uses a lightly grogged terracotta, which is sensitive enough to pick up the most subtle of modelled figurative expressions and nuances. Each ceramic piece is individually conceived and its exploration unique. An important element of the sculptures is their slip decoration, which aims to enhance the emotional resonance of the work.
