Kerry Jameson, Alchemy

Acts of transformation and transmutation are key driving forces behind Kerry Jameson's upcoming exhibition at Marsden Woo Gallery.

'The Alchemist, like the smith, and the potter before him, is a 'master of fire'. It is with fire that he controls the passage of matter from one state to another.'*

Acts of transformation and transmutation are key driving forces behind Kerry Jameson's upcoming exhibition. Taking inspiration from shamanic aspects of alchemy, and early culture such as the Lascaux cave paintings of the Paleolithic era (described by Georges Bataille as 'bearing witness to what art was and when art began') this new series of work evokes the movement of a primal state of consciousness into a place of realization, and her strange, dream-like creatures form a powerful link between the mythological and the everyday.

Jameson instinctively explores the transformative qualities of raku, and further modifies her figurative ceramic sculptures by adding mixed materials and hessian. She has previously spoken of these hessian additions as being a protective, strengthening layer, rather than a covering. Armour against the modern world, perhaps?

Using an expressive palette of earthy reds, ochres, metallic finishes, and including dynamic works on paper, Alchemy sees Jameson's versatile practice immerse the viewer within an intriguing realm amidst the past and present, the hidden and the emerging, the extraordinary and the commonplace.

*Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible: The Origins and Structure of Alchemy, 1962, University of Chicago Press, p. 79. Image: Kerry Jameson, work in progress (2016)

KERRY JAMESON trained at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design and the Royal College of Art. Her ceramic and mixed media sculptures have an emotional charge that is presented through a mix of narrative set pieces, tableaux and individual figures. Subjects include historical events and the exploits of folkloric and storybook characters. The predominant aesthetic is that of the uncanny – where objects are recognized as familiar and at the same time experienced as deeply strange.

Jameson has been shortlisted for the prestigious 2013 FIRST@108 Public Art Award at the Royal British Society of Sculptors and the Arts Foundation Ceramics Fellowship in 2011. She took second prize in the Man Photography Awards in 2008. Her work is featured in many private collections and the public collections, both nationally and internationally.