A "Womb" with a View

Womb with a View is an evolving body of work comprising wheel-thrown porcelain and stoneware vessels that use the ceramic vessel and the uterus as parallel forms to explore ideas of function, non-function, ageing and identity.

The work began with an unexpected awareness of the purpose held within my own biology. As perimenopause approached, I found myself grieving, not motherhood, but the ending of a biological capacity I had never intended to realise. That contradiction became the starting point for this body of work.

My partner jokingly called the collection Womb with a View. At first I laughed. Then I thought, yes... yes it is.

Each work begins as the same wheel-thrown form. One remains upright: refined, useful and functional. The other is simply inverted. Nothing about the form changes except our relationship to it. In that simple act, a functional vessel becomes an artwork.

Viewed through the window of a 47-year-old womb looking towards non-function, the work asks what remains when purpose shifts. What stories does it see from its window? What social constructs does it witness? What threads does it continue to tug on? When does the old wise crone enter?