Suzanne Russell

Suzanne Marie Russell has been working with ceramics since 2017. Russell challenges preconceived ideas about how ceramic objects are understood by taking them out of domestic space and proposing a new context in which to see them. By using clay to make objects that have no practical function and refuse the conventional values of skill and beauty, her goal is to make art work that negotiates the uncomfortable space of the abject body and gives ceramics a non-craft identity. Russell constructs anthropomorphic objects that are in some way ridiculous, unstable or exaggerated. She is interested in the ways in which clay as a material can elicit and hold the emotional states and marks of the maker: how clay objects can embody information in the form an energy that reflects the act of making and the meaning of the work. Russell is interested in the tension between form and surface, and she obsessively mark the surfaces of her objects as she builds them. Russell’s ritualistic approach invokes many different cultural histories within the ceramic tradition, specifically fertility and burial rituals that use figures, animals, warriors, deities, houses, bowls and grave markers.
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