EKWC (European Ceramics Work Centre) Artist in Residence 2025-2026
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Can humans shape lava?

Stones/Lava is a body of work that explores the intersection of nature, material transformation, art and craft through experimental ceramic glaze casting. By subverting traditional ceramic processes, I return to the raw potential of glaze itself—melting shards of stone within hand-coiled clay vessel forms.

Referencing sand-casting techniques from metalwork, each piece is encased in sand and fired to temperatures exceeding 1280°C. The resulting surfaces resemble man-made lava, emerging through a dynamic interplay of material behaviour, process, and experimentation. Moving deliberately away from clay, these works are constructed from stone and glaze alone, allowing distinctions between structure and surface to dissolve. Materials shift between states—holding and melting, stability and flux—revealing transformation as a gradual process rather than an imposed outcome.

This series considers how influence can operate indirectly—through guidance, containment, and the orchestration of conditions rather than direct control. The ceramic shell acts not as a dominant force, but as a framework that channels material agency. Heat, gravity, and chemical reactions become quiet collaborators under the artist’s hand.

Drawing on historic casting techniques such as sand casting and pâte de verre in glass casting, this work repositions glaze as a primary structural material rather than a surface finish. While traditional ceramics rely on control and precision, this process embraces uncertainty, allowing matter to assert its own tendencies. Stone—typically reduced to powder in glaze chemistry—is reintroduced in its raw, fragmented state, reclaiming its presence within the transformation.

Through this hybrid methodology, Stones/Lava proposes an alternative material future for ceramics—one that acknowledges the subtle forces at play between human intention and natural process. It suggests that power in making does not always lie in domination, but in the ability to influence, enable, and yield—where transformation emerges through collaboration rather than control.
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This project is supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council Cultural Exchange Grant.
Hong Kong Arts Development Council fully supports freedom of artistic expression. The views and opinions expressed in the projects do not represent the stand of the Council.
此計劃項目由香港藝術發展局文化交流基金贊助
香港藝術發展局全力支持藝術表達自由，項目內容並不反映本局意見。