Charlotte Walker Art Foundation Degree

  Mandy Barker is an award winning artist who is known for her powerful images capturing marine debris that she has collected and photographed over a span of 13 years, raising awareness about plastic pollution and gaining global recognition.  Barker’s work was one of my main motives to do this project; her images are so impactful and shocking as they expose one of the biggest threats to the ocean ecosystems and we are always overlooking it; the government gives us a false sense of comfort that they are doing something to stop it while big brands greenwash their products to divert our attention from the truth. It seems to now be in the hands of creatives like Barker to reveal the true scale of this crisis. At a first glance the images are very beautiful and their vastness reminds me of photos of space taken by NASA; I think this visual appeal is crucial in getting as much attention as possible - people are drawn to a beautiful image before realising what they’re looking at, and by this

  My marbled cartons were sprayed with the airbrush in chun clear glaze so they have super even coverage, and these are the results. Glazing then firing them again brought out the coloured slip which contrasts strongly with the white clay and I think it has successfully created the oil-spill image that I had in mind. The way the black swirls through the body of the piece gives an impression of pollution and disease taking over - the drinks carton is no longer appealing as something to consume, the exterior implies that the 'contents' are also spoiled. This could be a comment on how packaging can be deceptive or untruthful, hiding the realities of the industry; greenwashing is a particular issue in this way because  brands like to push the idea that they are being sustainable by stating the obvious facts such as the cardboard being recyclable (as if they deserve a medal for this) while they are still doing other harmful things to the environment such as shipping the products wra

The FDA group have been working on a project calleld 'structure' and I was given the opportunity to display some work along with theirs at the Erewash Museum, since my pieces fit in nicely with the theme. We went to set it up this week and I mainly helped arrange the objects in the cabinet. I think there is a really beautiful range of things in there and they all work really well together since we somehow synchronised a bit on our colour palettes. The objects are all small scale and you can spend a while looking at all the details and discovering new things which is what I think makes this display so good.   Picture taken by Chris. I really like the way this photo captures the colours of the glazes and the light is kind of warm and fuzzy, creating a softness and a halo around the cartons. 

 My next set of cartons are an experiment with different coloured slips to make a marbled effect. When my last set came out of the kiln I noted that the black one reminded me of oil and the problems we face because of it, especially in the ocean. I imagined that marbling black slip into the body clay would create a fluid pattern similar to that of an oil spill, and represent pollution contaminating the water.  swirling dyed black slip into plain earthenware slip Here's how it looks straight out of the mold. The black is quite subdued but I know from my nerikomi test pieces that the stained clay shows up very strongly after firing. The pattern it has created was exactly what I was going for, it has swirling lines and blotches of black that mimic the behaviour of oil on water, and it kind of reminds me of mould too. This idea of decay keeps coming back to me throughout the project and I think it's a reflection of the fading hope that our generation faces when we look to the futur

  After several of my porcelain cartons came out broken, I decided to try earthenware instead, which should be stronger. Unfortunately it means there is a smaller range of glazes to choose from. The two more damaged looking cartons in this image are porcelain while the other three are earthenware, so you can see the difference it made to switch to the thicker clay as they came out of the mold much cleaner and didn't break from handling. Here are the results of the three earthenware pieces - I think they look really good. I went with turquoise, matt black and antique green. I decided to use these colours after my previous lot where I thought the dove glaze was most effective, the cold tone reminded me of stone and the natural world. The turquoise one (left) has a beautiful gradient that reminds me of a clear shallow sea, an idealistic vision of what the world could look like without pollution and litter. It has a fluidity as the intense blue bleeds into the lighter tones.  The middl