Documentation Unit 3
Developing set in stone from Unit 2this is what my inital plans were going into this unit, i wanted to develop my project ‘set in stone’ to create a well rounded, imaginative and creative show:
‘As I move into Unit 3, I want to keep building on these ideas by creating an installation that brings the ceramic pieces and photographs together in a more immersive way. I want the work to feel like a physical extension of my inner world, something tender, open, and a little bit broken. I'm thinking about making a sculptural piece that represents myself, physically forming a distorted version of me out of clay. I’m also planning to create a short black and white film that captures the quiet moments I’ve been exploring in my ceramic work. It feels important to keep working in a way that’s intuitive and based on emotion, using this practice as a space for release, reflection, and self-understanding.’
Set in Stone (2024)
Ceramic stoneware pieces set with photographic decals.
Displayed on shelves, A to B Gallery
Ceramic stoneware pieces set with photographic decals.
Displayed on shelves, A to B Gallery
DEVELOPING THE WORK FROM UNIT 2
I also experimented with collage in Unit 2 by cutting up photographs and layering them into new arrangements. I found it exciting to take images from completely different places and piece them together into something unfamiliar, almost like shaping a new sense of self or reality. With ADHD my imagination often runs in unexpected directions, and collage gave me a space to channel that by building an imaginary world. I only touched on it briefly in Unit 2, but I realised how much I enjoyed the process, so in Unit 3 I developed it further as a key part of my practice.
THE PROCESS
I began the process by shooting and selecting some of my favourite landscape film photographs that i’d taken. I was drawn to images that carried a sense of liminality, places that felt like they existed in-between states or moments.
John Stezaker
- Known for splicing vintage film stills, postcards and magazines.
- His work cuts and collages fragments to form surreal and unsettling “new” realities.
- His approach links to my own mixing of personal and found material, where disjunction creates a new imaginative space.
I experimented with collage by mixing my own film photography with cuttings from vintage magazines. This process quickly became important as it allowed me to create new realities out of fragments, almost like escaping my mind into an imagined world. This approach connects to John Stezaker, who cuts and reconfigures found imagery to create unsettling new realities. I like the way he mixes people with landscape in an unexpected way and plays with persepctive. The images sort of link but dont. Although an inspiration of mine, I knew I wanted my works to create more of a recognisable visual idea, albeit an abstract one.
For example, using rocks or text as the sky, or implementing windows in a sunset. The idea was to create new images using pre existing ones. I liked the mixed media element too, like using vinatge cartoon style over film. This really further portayed the messiness of my imagination and the sometimes confusing nature of ADHD in the mind.
MY WORK
CREATING THE SHAPES
Creating the pieces, I wanted to move beyond neat, uniform square tiles and explore more unique, irregular forms in clay. I allowed the process to guide me, experimenting intuitively rather than planning everything in advance. In some pieces I focused on creating built-in borders for my photographic decals, using a serrated-edged metal rib to glide across the soft clay. This left abstract imprints that acted like frame. I also experimented with curved shapes and arches, considering how the pieces would occupy space and stand up in a gallery setting. These forms reflect my interest in organic, imperfect structures, mirroring the fractured and layered themes within the work itself, and encouraging viewers to engage with each piece as an individual object rather than a uniform tile.
Rachel Kneebone Rachel Kneebone was an artist I looked into when exploring ceramics that hold deeper emotional meaning. Her work focuses on human emotion, transformation and instability, which really resonated with me. On her website, she describes working her “clay body” to encourage an organic response, embracing chance and a loss of control. Kneebone uses the fragility of porcelain to show vulnerability and emotional tension. She embraces the unpredictable nature of her medium (porcelain) which is exactly the shift I began to make in my own work. Seeing how she allows porcelain to carry emotional weight without concealing its weakness encouraged me to embrace imperfection as part of my own language. Exploring Kneebone’s artwork and process have helped me see how material honesty can become a form of emotional clarity, where process itself holds the most meaning.
“Rachel Kneebone’s work addresses and questions the human condition: renewal, life cycles and the physical body. Working primarily in sculpture that embraces the unpredictable nature of its medium – porcelain – Kneebone focuses on ideas of movement and metamorphosis, transformation and suspension and the material manifestation of fluid physical states. Kneebone has stated that her work is ‘concerned with inhabiting the body, what it is to be alive in the world’.”
TRANSFERRING THE PHOTOGRAPHIC DECALS ONTO CERAMICS
Here is some of the process of setting the decals onto my glazed ceramic stoneware pieces.
It’s a cathartic process that involes printing on special transfer paper, cutting the desired shape and placing in water for one minute to allow the image to seperate from the transfer paper.
The photographic decal can then be peeled away from the paper (like a temporary tattoo) and placed onto the glazed ceramic. I then use a rubber rib, or some cloth to push the water and air from beneath the the image and its firmly in place on the ceramic.
This then goes in for firing in the kiln at a special temperature, which sets the image permentanly onto the piece.
I wanted to keep elements from my Unit 2 process, when Set in Stone really began taking shape. Back then, I started experimenting with destroying parts of the image through burning, ripping and folding, to see how those disruptions could become part of the meaning. I carried that idea forward here by setting the photographic decal onto the ceramic surface, then carefully ripping it away once it had started to set. The faded, partial image that remains feels like a trace or memory, something half-forgotten or unstable. This process reflects the themes I’ve been exploring around fragmentation, missed moments and emotional instability. By allowing the image to break down, I’m embracing imperfection and showing how memory and identity can shift or erode over time.
THE SELECTION PROCESS
I chose this selection because I wanted to show a balance between the collage-style pieces spread across multiple tiles and the more sculptural, singular forms. I picked works that felt connected through texture and tone, where the surface still holds traces of handling and slight imperfections. There’s a bit of damage in some pieces, but I liked keeping that minimal so the focus stays on the imagery and composition. Together they capture the mix of control and unpredictability that runs through my practice.
SIZING
CREATING THE EXHIBTION LAYOUT
The layout of the work felt really important, especially as this was the first time I included moving image. After feedback from my earlier Set in Stone installation, I wanted to move away from a layout that felt too uniform or commercial. Previously, the pieces were displayed in a straight line on thin shelves, which made them feel more like objects for sale than part of a connected narrative.
With this developed work, I wanted the arrangement to feel more considered and reflective of the themes I explore, like fragmentation, instability and the passing of time. I started by placing the largest circular ceramic slightly off-centre, then gradually built the other pieces around it. This looser, more organic composition allowed each piece to breathe, almost like fragments orbiting one another. The scattered layout reflects how I piece things together through memory and process, and mirrors the sense of chaos, movement and emotional layering that runs through my work.
THE FINAL WORK
SET IN STONE. MA SHOW, CAMBERWELL
Set in Stone, 2025.
Edie Holland
Ceramic installation, photographic collage, and moving image projection
This installation brings together ceramics, photography and moving image to explore how living with ADHD shapes perception, memory and emotion. At its centre, a moving image projection plays across a large ceramic surface, surrounded by smaller fragments of clay printed with collaged photographs. Each piece holds traces of touch and distortion, where images are folded, ripped or reassembled to reflect shifting focus and the fluid way thoughts overlap. The work grew from a desire to construct new visual realities that offer a moment of pause or escape, places where the scattered rhythm of the mind can find a quiet kind of order.
Working with clay became a way to understand emotion through the body, as the material records pressure, hesitation and care. The photographic collages, built from both 35mm film images and vintage magazine cuttings, create imagined spaces that sit between reality and memory. Together, the elements form a fragmented yet connected environment that mirrors how thoughts and experiences overlap in a constantly shifting state.
Rather than seeking resolution, Set in Stone embraces imperfection, fluidity and the instability of attention. The work invites viewers into a space that reflects both the tenderness and turbulence of living with a mind that rarely stands still.
This video was projected on a loop onto a large stoneware ceramic tile, placed alongside my other ceramic pieces. It shows a series of moments that reflect how my mind shifts between states with ADHD and anxiety. A bumblebee slowly taking nectar, a flower opening in its own time, a car accelerating fast, a snake hunting, a heart beating quickly. All of these images move between calm and chaos. Sometimes there is a rising tension, other times a feeling of pause, and often both are present at once. The video is in black and white, which makes the contrasts sharper and focuses attention on the rhythm rather than colour.
Projecting onto ceramic instead of a plain wall mattered to me. The surface of the stoneware interrupts the image slightly, breaking it up and giving it a more fragile, imperfect quality. That felt important because it echoes the fractured but still held together feeling that runs through this body of work. The loop also mirrors how these states come back again and again, thoughts racing then slowing then racing again. A bit like that fight or flight feeling.
Artists such as Tony Oursler have shown how projecting moving images onto physical surfaces can create a different kind of presence, where the image feels embodied rather than detached. For me this connection to materiality was central, as the clay and the projection work together to hold the tension between the tangible and the fleeting. Where the clay tiles with photographs are solid and permanent, the video feels unstable and temporary That is at the heart of Set in Stone: trying to ground scattered thoughts through making while also acknowledging that nothing ever stays completely still.