“My work reflects in-betweenness, where un-controllable things happen. I make intuitively and spontaneously with clay. This allows me to capture and express the conflict and vulnerability that I feel, like wading through the harsh reality of being both solitary and attempting to be courageous in the studio.” (2006)
— Zoe Lloyd
Darkness Became Visible
2021
I make my clay from shredded paper of sensitive data blended with other failures made upon the pottery wheel. Leather hard I construct a frame with bones to support a soft withered skin made from dreams and visions of things not yet known.
Forms are related to the body. They are imaginative externalisations of the human interior, sometimes suggestive of endoscopic lifeforms transmogrified into three dimensions they are then deconstructed to become amalgamated.
A primitive form rises. Beads of glaze create breasts. It drags an ancient spine with heavy legs. A tail wags behind.
A snare, caught in a trap!
Playful and manipulated, the veins are sharp, only the tongue remains, evidence of the struggle from enclosure.
Inside an empty cage a weeping socket and some worms remain, the cracks show a struggle.
Holes in the dustpan seep a putrid slimy residue and tree like growths stand to attention like eggy soldiers.
In the surreal landscape, a magical form is visible with transformative powers, its closed and open forms collide to create an in-betweenness.
A subterranean creature rises from the swamp, blood flows like lava.
The branches dissolve as a putrid light passes amongst the ruins to reveal a slow life disintegrating.
A towering inferno transforms, burning everything that stands in its way. A savage stick sprang from the inferno seeking refuge from the burning heat of the dying day.
Broken, bones reconstruct, flesh hangs loosely and through the cracks seep a mouldy residue, remnants of lockdown, panic when on the brink of collapse.
Zoe Lloyd
Photo by Robert Chadwick