Zoë Marsh – Artist Statement 2025
Both my birthplace near Manchester and home near Wirksworth are areas rich in textile heritage. The proximity of Stoke-Upon –Trent, an area shaped by the pottery industry also seems somehow appropriate to my choice of media; Ceramics and Textiles
In my former life as a Head of secondary Art & Design, I encouraged students to combine techniques and processes in original ways. I apply the same experimental approach to my own practice now.
Each new piece takes a minimum of six weeks to produce. Most is textile in origin; originating as a ‘collage’ of old clothes, wallpaper samples, hand prints and hand cut paper before I even open the bag of clay! It’s a very labour-intensive process, involving three firings including a digital transfer. The outcome is quite unique. The small blemishes and imperfections on the final ceramic tiles are due to the handmade quality of the tiles.
These irregularities add to the quirky nature of my work and render each piece individual, whilst allowing me to reproduce new versions of my images, safe in the knowledge that they are never identical.
Recently my focus has turned from the outside world to a more introspective subject matter. Abstract pieces reinvent the scribbled wire trees of earlier landscapes on a much larger scale to represent the internal landscape and tangled emotions of a woman in her fifties.
