A Celebration of Making, Matthew Chambers

My sculpture is born from the potter’s wheel. Each piece is constructed of many sections that are thrown and built to create a sculpture of complex, individual beauty with rhythm and symmetry in each form. I am interested in the progression of pattern and how it can evoke a different feeling and quality depending on the position of the flow.

An early training in production ceramics gave me a passion for the making process and is still the driving force behind the creation of my sculpture. Then through my education, practice, and persistence I have developed a unique method that utilises the versatility of clay to its potential, which is essential for creating the individual character of the work.

I sometimes think of my work of a celebration of making. I see it as one that will ask for no explanation for what it is, but carry a defined feeling and emotional weight through its own unique abstraction. In these dark days of modern life, confusion and fear can sometimes be prominent, and a lot of what we do seems to just get bigger and convoluted. I want to create work that is the flip side of this coin— to entice and express a true and honest beauty and power through a depth and complication in a similar way that great music can do. I want what I make to be this statement which celebrates the beauty that can come from using the skills of the hand, and also of the purity in form that can be achieved through a certain focus and repetition in pattern.

My own journey in making has in one form or another always held a base in a focus of the repetition of pattern. The repetition in each embodiment could be described as slightly obsessive, yet it can also hold a true and honest rhythm and beauty— whether subconsciously in the former and aimed for with the latter. In the tableware, this was accomplished with the physical, channelled through the rhythm of the repeated action in the making process— making 1 form, then repeat form 2, then 3, then 4 and so on like a pattern in music; a visual forming of repet- itive beats as each pot is placed next to the last one and the story is constructed. This action has channelled into my sculpture, where the visual rhythm is more conscious and purposefully created, by using the placement of each repeat form layered inside another to express a beauty in intrigue and power.