Statement
My studio practice, research and collaborations are focused on material explorations orbiting around clay and ceramic processes. My sensitivity to clay and ceramic objects informs how I approach and tease out properties in other materials and objects. These material investigations are influenced by the complexity of memory and bodily experience through habitual, sensual and erotic connectivity. My recent work has been focusing more in the domestic realm where the body and object collide and expand in both lived and imagined space. My aim is to find moments of shift, slippage and compression through material and conceptual relationships. Boundaries are permeable and arbitrary; the distances we impose between body, object and space are merely separated by semantic distinction.
Clay is imbued with rich and varied histories with ceramic objects residing in the background of everyday life. Our relationships to this material and these objects, though often overlooked, are deeply seeded in a history of movement and display through utility and ornament. Ceramics has the advantage of already being there; it just needs to be seen and enacted. It crops up then fades into the background only to emerge once more. It is this perpetuity of emergence and connection to the body and materiality from which my practice is centered, expands and returns.
— Joseph Madrigal