EDIE HOLLAND ARTIST STATEMENT
My practice sits between photography and ceramics and is shaped by a dialogue between time, touch and emotional experience. I work with clay and analogue photography to explore how thoughts and feelings are held physically as well as mentally, particularly in relation to ADHD and anxiety. I am interested in how material processes can slow or regulate attention, allowing space for reflection and grounding. Clay records touch, pressure and hesitation, while film photography captures brief, fragmentary moments. Together, they form a language of both presence and uncertainty.
In my recent installation Set in Stone (2025), I combined ceramic forms with collaged photographic decals and moving image projection. The projection moves across a textured clay surface, shifting and fragmenting as the light interacts with the material. Surrounding fragments of clay printed with cut and layered photographs explore the instability of attention and the non-linear rhythms of thought. This approach draws from phenomenological ideas of embodied perception, particularly the writing of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who describes the body as our primary way of understanding the world.
The work embraces imperfection as part of its meaning. Cracks, seams and uneven surfaces are not corrected but acknowledged as part of the emotional and physical process of making. Through bringing photography into contact with clay, I aim to create spaces where internal experience becomes material, and where fragments can be held rather than resolved.