Lorna Phillips

The empty ancient lakebed that is the present-day land of Kunda is the current source of the artist’s practice. The traces of the lake and its inhabitants are entered into conversation with, through the materials and forms that persevere. The river is the remaining artery that continues to flow through the land. Prehistoric artefacts have been preserved in the peatlands and mounds that have formed through the evolution of the landscape. The clay of Kunda continues to be mined, and worked, with hands. The relationship between the waterways of Estonia and the mining industry have heavily impacted the political and social identity of the land’s inhabitants.

As the ground groans underneath us it gathers the history of our actions within its layers.

The wild clays are dug, carried, and re-distributed. They are given in their installation. To the land, the ancestors, and to people’s homes along the coast. Works return to their source. The working is journeying through the landscape. Entering people’s everyday lives, submerging its sherds into the earth, engulfing itself into the cycles of life, material and human, past and present.

In their migration their traces are scattered. The artist, as a young female maker and aspiring craftsperson, engages with the history of female potters from the earliest human settlements on the land. The stories of these women and their journeys over the Baltic Sea reveal a respect for clay, their forebearers and the natural environment that is incredibly beautiful. Driving the artist to give something back to this understanding and intimacy with the earth and what it holds. Encountering the land as a container of knowledge, history, lives passed and continuing through their decay, as a foundation in all sense of the word. Supporting, holding, and creating.

Giving offerings to sacred places, collapsing burial grounds, and past islands that are now sloping hills in flatlands. These are the actions compelled by a closeness formed to the physicality of the land that the artist finds themself in. Searching, touching, digging for an understanding, and through it finding a sensitivity and a deep sense of care for their surroundings, its heritage and culture.

There are gestures of gratitude in the work. The large moon jar (‘Thank you’) is made of two open halves that surrender themselves to be one whole. The work will go to the artist’s parent’s home. A gift back to those that have given so much. A gift to those that support. The clays of the artist’s new home migrating to family further afield.

The artist’s personal stories are intertwined with the stories of people passed. Biographies are found, created, and remembered through the clay. The land is shown to be something at the very heart of human existence. It may be possible to hold the clay but ultimately, we are held by it.

Lorna Phillips hopes to form understandings of unknown environments through the geology and archaeology of the land. With a wish to pursue the community of our surroundings as a source of wisdom. To move through times and cultures in order to learn from the past and better the present.