Primitive Creativity and Digital Craft. 

My ceramics are a commentary on the times we live in, with a focus on synthesising primitive creativity, craft and digital processes together.

Before ceramics grabbed me and brought me to St Ives in 2015, my background was in business strategy and design. In 2008, I established my own consultancy in digital business design.

I’ve always been fascinated by culture and how we have always created the world we live in through the things we make. As an artist, I’m interested in themes of origin and culture, identity and heritage. I like to explore the intersection between innovation and tradition, things that are momentary and things that last.

Technology has had an influence on me from when I was given the task of launching the Apple Macintosh in the UK in 1984 as a young advertising executive in London. There were 23 years before that when life was completely analogue.

I think of what we are witnessing now as the birth of digitally-empowered human civilization. I see this chapter in human evolution - as we transition from the industrial age to a time shaped by automation and artificial intelligence - as an epochal shift that warrants a narrative.

Writing this in early 2024, we are now living with artificial intelligence as a force equal or superior to ourselves. It’s the first time in history we’ve co-exited with anything that challenges human capability, and there are unknown consequences.

For me, all this comes with a caution. It is vital not to abandon the wisdom of the past - our authentic intelligences - and the benefits and freedom we’ve created for ourselves through purely human agency. These things have stood the test of time, while the digital world can be erased in an instant.

The question of what and who we want to be as digital humans is an ongoing thought behind what I make. I honour this thought by using clay as a sustainable medium of the earth that has been reliably built to last throughout civilization.

The role of the individual in society, iconography and encoding are a particular focus of my [Alter Piece] figures, while with the thrown pieces I tend to focus on origin themes, callouts about the preservation of human autonomy and the value of retaining independent action.

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Read about another project - thoughts about the emergence of digital civilization at
www.emergentcodechronicles.com