Erin Bussell

Erin Bussell is a ceramic artist based in Naarm/Melbourne. She approaches her practice as a collaborative process between maker and material. This has led to a way of working with glaze that enables it to play an active role in the shaping of form and surface. The use of slip cast spheres filled with glaze, which rupture during the firing, yields rich, glossy blood-red drips that merge in places with the fleshy toned puffs that ooze over the skin and dominate the surface. Like parasitic eggs that have cracked open, the contents burst free, consuming the forms. These abstract creatures serve as a material manifestation of the psyche, embodying emotions of fear, tension and anxiety that build and bubble in the body in the uncertain landscape of a global pandemic.