White Mud

Porcelain, metal, wood and paint.

This artwork featured in The Precious Clay (2019). A Meadow Arts commission, 2018.

Laura White presents a new work, White Mud; a collection of porcelain objects that occupy and explore their own materiality – exposing the elemental material behaviour of this extraordinary ‘white matter,’ through the artists hands-on manipulation, and the processes and techniques used in the production of porcelain objects, such as casting, handbuilding, glazing and firing. Working with the material’s capabilities and limitations, such as the collapses, breaks and cracks that occur, exposes the vulnerability and strength of the material, while also offering up new and challenging possibilities.

Laura’s installation reflects on the production of porcelain today, such as how the digital environment has impacted porcelain production, from handmade museum collectables to the mass-produced, digitally designed, slip cast crockery we use every day in our homes.

The installation makes reference to the Museum of Royal Worcester’s unique collection. Key objects from the museum have been digitally scanned in order to make 3D printed replicas, which have then been used to make moulds to cast from. Similar moulds have also been made from more familiar, everyday objects, including plastic containers and fashionable household ornaments which, combined with the museum copies, perform a medley of interactions.

Bringing these different types of objects together using the same material conflates different histories and questions how we value objects depending on their materiality and the context in which we come across them – from the museum to the domestic, the perfect to the damaged, and what our expectations are of different materials, in particular porcelain.

This collection of objects is mounted on a bespoke shelving unit which both elevates the work while also grounding it in a workshop ethos, where these individual porcelain pieces have experimentally come into being.

 

About the artist

Laura White

Laura White exhibited at No.1 Station Approach, Hereford, 2024 – 2025, commissioned by Meadow Arts and Hereford College of Arts; and The Precious Clay, Museum of Royal Worcester, 2018 – 2019, commissioned by Meadow Arts.

Image: Laura White, White Mud, 2018.