︎︎︎
critical reflection
Does recreating the everyday make it extraordinary?
My practice seeks to find the beauty in the mundane. I believed that it was in the properties of a photograph alone that
could elevate everyday objects to the realm of the sublime. This belief has recently shifted as I have been working with more sculptural forms, specifically ceramics. I set out to create a series of surreal, hyper-specific clay sculptures: a fried egg, a miniature DJ deck, a melting man incense holder. These objects were a playful way to converse with the ordinary, but their material transformation invites a rethinking and a new frame in which to view their purpose and meaning. By crafting familiar items out of clay, I want people to pause and reflect on how these everyday objects can work when removed from their usual context. Through this process, I aim to accent the way we connect with the mundane, inviting a more tactile and thoughtful engagement with the world and the objects around us. Through this practice I want to question wether creating this work can affect the way we think about ourselves and each other.
I found it difficult to pinpoint my ‘why’ within these works until I was reminded of Duchamp’s Fountain: a simple urinal placed in an art gallery, stripped of its function and redefined as art. Was it its controversy that made it significant, or the way it challenged traditional ideas of what art could be? The world that surrounded the Fountain was perversely implicated. This idea of re-contextualising everyday objects runs throughout my work, as is the case in any photographic practice I think. My theoretical thinking strayed to surrealism, which I gave some serious attention to after witnessing the Dalí exhibition in Paris. Surrealism is unrestrained, allowing artists to break free from logic and tradition. Dalí’s Lobster Telephone (1936) transformed a familiar object into something absurd, forcing viewers to reconsider its meaning. My body of work plays with that same shift between the familiar and the surreal, using clay to disrupt an object’s original purpose and reframe how we engage with it. By leaning into instinct and imagination, I want to explore how shifting context can change the way we see the ordinary.
The fried egg, for example, is an inherently mundane object, tied to routines of breakfast and domesticity. By recreating it in clay, it loses its function and becomes a still, almost absurd version of itself, much like Salvador Dalí’s use of familiar objects to create surreal narratives. Creating a fried egg out of clay was the first piece of this surreal series and one I focused in on because of my every day enjoyment for eggs: the look, taste, appearance. There is nothing out of the ordinary or remarkable about an egg but it is precisely this notion that sparked my interest in it. How can I make something unremarkable… remarkable? Photography serves as a medium for me to record an otherwise fleeting moment in time. I couldn’t help but think how an object changes once it's moulded and then photographed.
This practice and way of thinking was informed by Eugène Atget’s photographic exploration of the everyday. In Eugène Atget: The Marvellous in the Everyday (2001), Atget’s documentation of ordinary objects and spaces elevates them into subjects worthy of attention, emphasising their quiet and unassuming beauty. Similarly, my work focuses on transforming the banal into something unique, asking viewers to pause and reconsider the objects they encounter daily. Atget used the medium of photography to capture and immortalise these moments, I use clay to preserve them in tactile, tangible forms and then photograph them. Placing many of these works against stark white backgrounds isolates them from context, amplifying their uncanny qualities and inviting a contemplative reading of their sculptural presence. The size, scale and texture is unclear, it begs the question: can sculpture speak for itself, or do we always rely on words to make sense of it? We often talk about a 'visual language,' yet we still turn to spoken or written explanations to interpret art. In this body of work, the sculptures are shown through photographs rather than in their original three-dimensional form. Does this shift alter how they are understood, or do they retain the same meaning?
The tension between sculpture and photography is central to my research. These works, initially created as 3-D objects, now exist primarily through their photographic representations. This shift raises questions about the nature of documentation and how it alters the reading of physical forms. Vilém Flusser’s The Gesture of Photographing (2014) argues that the act of observing and photographing changes the subject itself. By presenting my clay works in this mediated format, I explore whether their materiality is diminished or transformed when viewed as flat, two-dimensional images. Do these objects lose their tactile, surreal presence, or does photography extend their narrative possibilities by offering a new lens through which to interpret them? These questions prompted me to explore the use of different backgrounds and environments against my works, and I tested this theory using the ceramic fried egg. The process involved making the object itself, photographing it, printing it, cutting it out and placing it against different environments. By removing the egg from its expected setting and placing it in unexpected environments, I investigate how an object’s meaning shifts depending on its context. This process is influenced by John Baldessari’s use of cutouts and photographic interventions, where images are fragmented, relocated, or obscured to challenge their original significance (Baldessari, 2012). As well as Claes Oldenburg’s use of familiar objects, framed in a new light by making them them larger than the human scale (Oldenburg, C. 2002). By translating a sculptural object into a printed image and reinserting it into the world, I explore how photography mediates perception and whether it simply documents or actively alters the subject.
This is the beginning of my exploration into the relationship between sculpture and photography and how objects are understood when they shift between the two. This process has opened up new questions that I want to keep investigating, particularly around surrealism, absurdity, and how context shapes meaning. Moving forward, I plan to push these ideas further, experimenting with how sculptural forms translate into photography and how this affects our perception of materiality and function. This project has shifted the way I think about photography, and I want to continue exploring how sculpture, photography, and storytelling can intersect in new and unexpected ways.
Bibliography
Baldessari, J. (2012) More Than You Wanted to Know About John Baldessari. Los Angeles: Marian Goodman Gallery.
Dali, S. (1936) Lobster Telephone. Tate Collection, London.
Flusser, V. (2014) The Gesture of Photographing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Oldenburg, C. (2002) Claes Oldenburg: An Anthology. New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications.
Atget, E. (2001) Eugène Atget: The Marvellous in the Everyday. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Duchamp, M. (1917) Fountain. Tate Collection, London.
I found it difficult to pinpoint my ‘why’ within these works until I was reminded of Duchamp’s Fountain: a simple urinal placed in an art gallery, stripped of its function and redefined as art. Was it its controversy that made it significant, or the way it challenged traditional ideas of what art could be? The world that surrounded the Fountain was perversely implicated. This idea of re-contextualising everyday objects runs throughout my work, as is the case in any photographic practice I think. My theoretical thinking strayed to surrealism, which I gave some serious attention to after witnessing the Dalí exhibition in Paris. Surrealism is unrestrained, allowing artists to break free from logic and tradition. Dalí’s Lobster Telephone (1936) transformed a familiar object into something absurd, forcing viewers to reconsider its meaning. My body of work plays with that same shift between the familiar and the surreal, using clay to disrupt an object’s original purpose and reframe how we engage with it. By leaning into instinct and imagination, I want to explore how shifting context can change the way we see the ordinary.
The fried egg, for example, is an inherently mundane object, tied to routines of breakfast and domesticity. By recreating it in clay, it loses its function and becomes a still, almost absurd version of itself, much like Salvador Dalí’s use of familiar objects to create surreal narratives. Creating a fried egg out of clay was the first piece of this surreal series and one I focused in on because of my every day enjoyment for eggs: the look, taste, appearance. There is nothing out of the ordinary or remarkable about an egg but it is precisely this notion that sparked my interest in it. How can I make something unremarkable… remarkable? Photography serves as a medium for me to record an otherwise fleeting moment in time. I couldn’t help but think how an object changes once it's moulded and then photographed.
This practice and way of thinking was informed by Eugène Atget’s photographic exploration of the everyday. In Eugène Atget: The Marvellous in the Everyday (2001), Atget’s documentation of ordinary objects and spaces elevates them into subjects worthy of attention, emphasising their quiet and unassuming beauty. Similarly, my work focuses on transforming the banal into something unique, asking viewers to pause and reconsider the objects they encounter daily. Atget used the medium of photography to capture and immortalise these moments, I use clay to preserve them in tactile, tangible forms and then photograph them. Placing many of these works against stark white backgrounds isolates them from context, amplifying their uncanny qualities and inviting a contemplative reading of their sculptural presence. The size, scale and texture is unclear, it begs the question: can sculpture speak for itself, or do we always rely on words to make sense of it? We often talk about a 'visual language,' yet we still turn to spoken or written explanations to interpret art. In this body of work, the sculptures are shown through photographs rather than in their original three-dimensional form. Does this shift alter how they are understood, or do they retain the same meaning?
The tension between sculpture and photography is central to my research. These works, initially created as 3-D objects, now exist primarily through their photographic representations. This shift raises questions about the nature of documentation and how it alters the reading of physical forms. Vilém Flusser’s The Gesture of Photographing (2014) argues that the act of observing and photographing changes the subject itself. By presenting my clay works in this mediated format, I explore whether their materiality is diminished or transformed when viewed as flat, two-dimensional images. Do these objects lose their tactile, surreal presence, or does photography extend their narrative possibilities by offering a new lens through which to interpret them? These questions prompted me to explore the use of different backgrounds and environments against my works, and I tested this theory using the ceramic fried egg. The process involved making the object itself, photographing it, printing it, cutting it out and placing it against different environments. By removing the egg from its expected setting and placing it in unexpected environments, I investigate how an object’s meaning shifts depending on its context. This process is influenced by John Baldessari’s use of cutouts and photographic interventions, where images are fragmented, relocated, or obscured to challenge their original significance (Baldessari, 2012). As well as Claes Oldenburg’s use of familiar objects, framed in a new light by making them them larger than the human scale (Oldenburg, C. 2002). By translating a sculptural object into a printed image and reinserting it into the world, I explore how photography mediates perception and whether it simply documents or actively alters the subject.
This is the beginning of my exploration into the relationship between sculpture and photography and how objects are understood when they shift between the two. This process has opened up new questions that I want to keep investigating, particularly around surrealism, absurdity, and how context shapes meaning. Moving forward, I plan to push these ideas further, experimenting with how sculptural forms translate into photography and how this affects our perception of materiality and function. This project has shifted the way I think about photography, and I want to continue exploring how sculpture, photography, and storytelling can intersect in new and unexpected ways.
Bibliography
Baldessari, J. (2012) More Than You Wanted to Know About John Baldessari. Los Angeles: Marian Goodman Gallery.
Dali, S. (1936) Lobster Telephone. Tate Collection, London.
Flusser, V. (2014) The Gesture of Photographing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Oldenburg, C. (2002) Claes Oldenburg: An Anthology. New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications.
Atget, E. (2001) Eugène Atget: The Marvellous in the Everyday. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Duchamp, M. (1917) Fountain. Tate Collection, London.