Vital Vessels are a series of ceramic sculptural vessels which are intended to be held, hugged, and cared for. Inspired by ancient examples of anatomical votives, and formed from highly imagined and inaccurate ideas of internal organs, they are designed to embody and carry the anxieties around health and the body.
I was compelled to produce the Vital Vessels after the growing number of conversations I would have with friends and family about their concerns, confusions and anxieties surrounding their bodies, well being, and healthcare access, especially post-pandemic. I felt a continued parallel with these modern health anxieties, to the need of ancient peoples to try and seek comfort and reassurance about their health concerns, where they did not have the medical knowledge or access to do so, through the creation and offering of votive objects.
Many examples of votives of internal organs show very inaccurate depictions compared to a modern doctor's understanding, however even nowadays, I believe most people would struggle to make a model of any part of their insides with any great accuracy - as exemplified by my sculptures which are my own highly fictitious, misinformed imaginings of viscera.
Made from ceramic, the perceived delicacy of the Vital Vessels, combined with their relative size, gives them a sense of preciousness, or precariousness, which provokes the handler to treat them with a lot of care, or cradle them like a baby.
When I think about my work, I consider bodies as vessels and thus consider my ceramic vessels to be representations of the body. My thinking around vessels is influenced by Ursula Le Guin's 'The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction', an incredible essay that recentres the carrying vessel as the first human technology rather than the weapon, and in this way retells the story of human evolution, and thus the evolution of storytelling, to decentre the violent, dominating weapon-yielding hero, and instead advocating for stories which sustain life and carry meaning.
In this vein, I think of my vessels, pots, stomachs and bodies as ‘cultural carrier bags’, embodying and carrying the persisting, very human, anxieties, curiosities, and fears around illness, wellness, and health.
