Exhibition | Eva Masterman’s Work Rooted in the Idea of Process

LONDON — Eva Masterman is a gifted artist and writer. Her dissertation for the Royal College of Art, C-Forum, was shortlisted for the Henry Moore Fine Art Dissertation Prize and it is a featured addition to our cfile.library. The following is an exhibition of her work, coupled with her statement. This is another edition of our summer seires of student projects. Please enjoy this unique talent and let us know what you think in the comments.

Investigation into material and process-led practices through cross-disciplinary workshops, seminars and writing, predicates my art-work. This dual approach of direct research into the boundaries and preconceptions of the visual arts, coupled with my own artistic practice, allows me to create a critical discourse that surrounds my own sculptural territory; one that sits firmly in the middle of the ‘expanded field’ of inter-disciplinary, material-specific making and fine art sculpture.

I feel my practice lies between the two worlds of art and applied art, constantly struggling with the question of what is “art,” “artful,” “craft” or simply “waste.” My work has become deeply invested in the idea of process; capturing the periphery elements, the happy accident, the marks, that are often discarded on the journey to the finished object. I endeavour to create a collective visual language that investigates the encounter between process, maker and viewer. By intensifying the “stuff” of making, the audience is brought into a corporeal and visceral environment, where connecting gestures of surface and form are reactivated through site-specific curation and installation.

Evoking the ruin, the architectural, the body, there is an attempt to contain and control the transition of material and mental states, creating tension through displacement of the familiar. The ubiquitous nature of clay accompanied by recognisable forms and supporting structures, is used to enhance to the visual interchange and sense of potential flux and instability. The resulting installations become a testament to the colluding nature of process and environment. Using clay as a set of rules and parameters in which to explore, the work endeavours to marry the conceptual with the physical, revealing the bodily realities of working in the studio and what it means, or how we make art.

Eva Masterman originally studied Fine Art at Kingston Upon Thames University and has recently graduated from her MA in Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art, London. Her interest in material-led practices and the use of clay as a sculptural medium, developed through national and international residencies including: Kunstlerhaus Stadttoepferei, Germany, Sanbao Ceramic Art Institute, China and the Kingsgate Workshop Trust, London. She has exhibited widely throughout the U.K., culminating in two solo shows at the William Benington Gallery, London. She also lectures several universities, and is developing a research practice around cross-disciplinary workshops, curation and writing, alongside her own practical investigations into process.

Do you love or loathe these works of contemporary ceramic art? Let us know in the comments.