I am a studio potter and I specialise in functional ceramics that take deep, although often very subtle, inspiration from sculptural forms. I am particularly interested in pre-industrial ceramics, often made by women in small, indigenous communities around the globe, and also in Modernist sculpture from across Europe.

My Churchill Fellowship was awarded in order to enable me to travel to west Africa to investigate pottery-making and firing techniques there. I will also travel to Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone, and I intend to learn particularly about hand-building and pit-firing, and to embrace and question a more direct fusion between function and sculpture. I want to question the concept of functionality itself, as seen through the eyes of cultures that include ritual, dance and music in their functional needs.

It is my desire to bring back these lessons and making techniques to the UK and use them in my work, as well as teaching others about them. It is important and interesting to me to promote the relevance of west African forms and approaches to art in what is a very much Eastern- and European-dominated area of ceramics in the UK.