Soft Ruins
Stick Figure & Sons Gallery, 2025Curated by Isaak Johnson
Materials: Wood-fired ceramics made from clay and mining waste, green felt carpet underlay, concrete blocks, wood, green silk thread, pink UV lighting, brown noise sound, oak moss perfume.
Soft Ruins is an installation exploring resilience, care, and cycles of renewal within post-industrial landscapes. The work brings together wood-fired ceramic sculptures made from clay and mining waste gathered from the Camborne–Redruth and St Austell china clay areas, fired at Brickfield, alongside industrial and domestic materials including green felt carpet underlay, concrete blocks, timber, and green silk thread.
Green felt carpet underlay covers the walls of the gallery space, onto which ceramic sculptures are sewn and attached. The sculptures include organic, dripping, sagging, and oozing forms. Pink UV lighting illuminates parts of the space.
The work also incorporates soft, earthy brown noise and a perfume made by the artist from locally collected oak moss, smelling slightly of decaying undergrowth, with dark, leathery, musky, animalic, and skin-like qualities.
Photographed by Nick Cooney
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