Ice Age – exhibited at the Venice Biennale 2026
The clay used in this work was created in the last ice age.
Over geological time, different rocks and minerals from places hundreds of miles apart were ground by glaciers to form a strong, well mixed ceramic material.
We are now experiencing a moment in time when differences are seen by many as something to be removed or purified.
This work explores how difference, cohesion and coexistence form strength and beauty through integration, not purity.
Ice Age
This work traces a material journey across geological time and human touch.
Fragments of stone – distinct, adjacent, unresolved – are ground by glacial force into clay: and impure but well mixed body shaped by pressure, movement, and coexistence. What begins as proximity becomes integration.
In the studio, this process continues. Clay and mineral are recombined, transformed through hand and fire into vessels that embody both difference and cohesion. Variation is not erased, but held in tension – visible in seems, surfaces and glaze.
The work reflects on a contemporary moment in which mixture is increasingly resisted, and difference is treated as something to be refined or removed. Yet the vessel cannot survive such correction intact.
Through fracture and repair, the peices suggest another possibility: that strength lies not in purity, but in composition – in the capacity of disparate elements to remain together, altered but enduring.
Innovative Processes
Ice Age is an ambitious body of work, conceived and executed within a three month timeframe. As well as using techniques that have become the artist’s hallmarks, several completely new and innovate processes were developed in order to deliver his specific conceptual vision. Below are some of these new and existing processes.
Vitrisugi
Vitrisugi
Vitrisugi is a unique and innovative process developed and named by the artist. The technique is related to and inspired by Kintsugi, the Japaneese technique for repairing broken ceramics with resin and gold. However, Kintsugi starts with a finished vessel, previously glazed entirely in a single glaze. For the Ice Age project, the artist wanted to celebrate not just the joins, as kintsugi does, but also the differences.
Vitrisugi involves shattering the vessel in its bisque fire state, allowing each individual piece to be glazed in a separate glaze. The pieces are then reassembled using clay which vitrifies during the glaze firing to fix the vessel together. A physical representation that differences and joins can be beautiful and strong – cracks and all.
Copper Nails
Copper Nails
While the vessel is still unfired – in what is called the leather hard phase – copper nails are pushed through the walls. These copper nails then melt in the glaze firing, flowing down the piece and mixing with the molten glaze. This technique emerged through the artist’s interaction with the renowned ceramicist and sculptor, Peter Hayes, while creating the ‘Guardians Across Two Shores’ sculptures as part of the Old Fire Station Collective for the Venice Biennale 2026.
Site Specific Glazes
Tying Venice and Wirral together conceptually
The range of glazes used on the Ice Age body of work were developed with the goal of using as many foraged/collected materials as possible, each having a story which thematically united Venice and Wirral/Liverpool. These ingredients are:
- Wood Ash – represents the wooden sailing ships which established both ports as major trading hubs for international commerce. The wood ash also represents the wooden pillars that were driven into the marshes, on which Venice is built.
- Marble – a key artistic material used in statues and façades across Venice, and in significant Liverpool landmarks such as The Walker Art Gallery, the Cunard Building and St George’s Hall.
- Granite – this material was quarried in Wales and transported to Liverpool, in significant quantities, from where it was then shipped around the world. And the winged lion of St Mark stands atop a granite pillar, keeping watch over Venice.
- Mussel Shells – a nod to the maritime nature of both regions
- Quartz – One of the key ingredients of the world renowned art glass made in Venice’s neighbouring island, Murano. It is also commonly found in Wirral sandstone formed in the Triassic period and along the shores of Wirral as a glacial erratic stone transported hundreds of miles during the last Ice Age.
Gunshot Wounds
Violence Frozen in Time
Two pieces of work in this body were shot using a rifle.
One (‘The Removed’) was shot while still unfired and in the semi-dry stage called leather hard. This piece freezes the physical violence of the weapon in vitrified entry and exist wounds.
The second (‘The Missing’) was shot after it had been bisque fired and was therefore prone to shattering. Here there is less of a visceral experience when compared to the above. Rather it is the broken vessel and the shards that did not survive – the ‘Missing’ – that provide the lasting evidence of the act perpetrated against it.
Foraged Clay
A sense of place
All of the artist’s work, including this body, uses clay foraged from within 10 miles of his studio. This clay was deposited here, on the Wirral, at the end of the last Ice Age and is termed ‘boulder clay’. It is composed of many different types of minerals which originated from places hundreds or thousands of miles apart. Over a geological time period these minerals were ground down to the super fine, well mixed particles that make this clay such a strong and stable ceramic raw material.
The foraged clay is minimally processed to remove any stones, or organic material, using traditional methods.
Enquire
A limited number of vases will be produced using the site specific glazes developed for this body of work. Commissions are available for any of the techniques used in this work as well. Click below to enquire about prices and availability.