Shame

Katie Cuddon has worked with clay since 1999, when she was studying at Glasgow School of Art. Her objects are difficult to define; they seem elusive and non-specific, not quite one thing or another. She feels that they occupy "an awkward space in-between subjects and consciously overt language. I think of the works as linguistic stutters and exponents of the inadequacy of words”. The surfaces of the works, which are modelled and then painted, sometimes in a uniform colour or multiple layers of paint, seem to have been applied, rubbed away and reapplied; the effect is to make them seem almost restless or on edge. Shame, 2014 resembles a cowering creature, burying its head beneath itself; it’s possible to imagine its clotted pink skin quivering. A Problem of Departure, 2013 suggests a pillow clasped between dimpled thighs. Discussing her work, Cuddon has cited the twentieth-century French sculptor Germaine Richier, who said of using clay as a recorder of marks: “The more you touch it, the more it screams.”

• Artwork Details: 50 x 37 x 77cm
• Edition:
• Material description: Painted ceramic
• Credit line: © the artist
• Theme: Undefined
• Medium: Sculpture
• Accession number: ACC52/2018