Bridget Tennent OAS, OCG – Oxfordshire Artweeks

297 Bridget Tennent OAS, OCG

Region: Charlbury – North & West

Artform: Ceramics

I started exploring end of life rituals when I was presented with a close relative’s ashes in a cardboard box. I felt immediately uneasy. These vestiges of an entire human life were somehow dimished by the receptacle in which they had been housed. What, I wondered, would constitute an appropriate container for such a precious cargo? What could one possibly utilise to carry a person’s mortal remains, and perhaps the most meaningful artefacts associated with it? – I didn’t reach a conclusion.

A little while later my thoughts were reignited by a chance visit to the Ashmolean Museum where I was confronted by an ancient Eqyptian burial box: an uncommon object extracted from uncommon ground. I knew I had found the very thing I was looking for: a precious receptacle for precious contents. A seed of an idea began to germinate, one that has ultimately inspired what I am currently making.

It is no coincidence that I am inspired by the past. It is ever present in my life, I live in an area once populated by our ancient Neolithic ancestors. I have since discovered they too made vessels for highly valued items: grain, money and jewellery which were buried in barrows alongside their owners. This notion of significant personal items being housed with the dead, in special receptacles, transcended lands and cultures. Civilisations, uncommon in so many ways, shared a deep spiritual connection, one our modern era appears to have lost.

Stoneware, smoke fired, slip and sgrafitto decorated vessels. The surface is magical and mysterious. The forms are strong and powerful.