Jemma Gowland is a Kent-based ceramic artist making figurative work that explores upbringing, and the way girls are constrained from birth to conform to appearance and behaviour, to present a perfect face, and maintain the expectations of others. Jemma’s disrupted surfaces and delicate porcelain clothing describe the vulnerability beneath. Revisiting the traditional form of the figurine also brings a weight of preconceptions; the figures Jemma creates use the properties of the materials to disrupt ideas.
Jemma’s powerful yet delicate pieces are created in stoneware and porcelain, with layers of glaze and oxide beneath a porcelain skin. The intriguing textured surfaces results from the different shrinkage rates of her chosen materials. Testing and material knowledge are just as important as her initial modelling skills, in the journey towards producing a finished piece.
To complete work, Jemma involves further materials, recycling children’s clothes from charity shops and sewing tiny versions for the figures, treating these in porcelain slip. Combining all these varied processes is a continuing and fascinating work in progress.
