In Loving Memory

Using the power and familiarity of historical forms in ceramics, I am exploring the collision between functional objects and subject matter rooted in pleasure, often deemed frivolous. This tension is particularly present in objects that straddle the boundary between function and decoration. Drawing from montage and collage, I intend to build visual narratives that reflect on queerness in the context of club and party culture. The club is a formative queer arena rife with contradictions, where hedonism, opulence and mess collide. I am interested in developing work that explores this experience and the ways in which ceramics can be used as a tool to memorialize them.

Queer histories have typically been documented through less conventional cultural traditions. In the past, when queer futures looked particularly uncertain, this kind of documentation was often more about reflecting the present than documenting for the future. Queer artists have played a crucial role in producing often subversive and radical works that inadvertently serve as archival materials for their communities. In more recent years, queer artists have been revising histories, highlighting and reimagining a past that embraces queerness, not one that erases it. In Loving Memory is a ceramics and light installation that invites viewers to engage with these formative queer spaces and the indulgence and abandon that shape them. I am amassing a visual vocabulary that combines historical, opulent forms with campy and contemporary graphics. I build up surface comprised of a combination of pop culture references and homages to the people that have carried me through these spaces. Fashion is an integral part of the club experience, and I have a particular interest in pattern that is inspired by textiles. I am continually exploring the thrown pottery form and mapping patterns and imagery on to the complex, three-dimensional surfaces of vessels.

This project is particularly salient in the context of Kjipuktuk/Halifax, which has now shuttered the last of its queer bars. Queer bars are crucial to developing and embracing queer community and even if just for a moment, this installation will allow people to peer in to a symbolic revival of these spaces.