I’m a ceramicist who works in Hepburn Springs in regional Victoria, Australia. I make functional and non-functional objects such as crackers, funnels, grinders, paddles, sculptures, sieves, spoons, strainers, tableware, and vessels.

I use high-fired ceramic stoneware and porcelain, which I beat, build, embed, pierce, scrape, squash, and transform until the colour, density, shape, texture, and tone are in harmony. I try to create beautiful objects, beautiful because they have a purpose and because they excite the imagination.

I’m influenced by nature because of its endless ‘variety within unity’. For example, I create series’ of work in which each constitutive object has its own unique character but combined create a unified whole.

Beyond form and function, feeling and imagery play important roles in my practice. I try to imbue emotional warmth and tenderness into my work with a hope that the objects are pleasurable to use, view, and hold. The imagery I use is again influenced by nature but it‘s also self-referential. I use images of my ceramic objects drawn on my ceramic objects! The self-referencing reinforces the formal qualities of the work by elucidating the relationship between two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality. Images of birds and clouds, for example, reflect nature’s all-encompassing influence on my art, here at the representational level, but also at the before mentioned abstract level.

I hope that my ceramic objects function well and delight, intrigue, and inspire the user by pointing them beyond the banality of everyday life to the wonders of nature and beauty.

Bridget Bodenham