1st—5th October 2024
Factory Fragments, a limited series of ceramics by artist Simon Kidd. Created using casts taken from features and structures in the NSF workshop, and fired using a range of natural materials and stone gathered from Oileán Chléire and the Factory itself.
Objects, sculptures, vessels, artefacts, pots. They always begin with a place, with its stories and feelings it evokes.
These pieces respond directly and indirectly to a place, they are embedded and coated with materials gathered from there. The forms informed by what is found there, or what once was there. I want these pieces to become artefacts of their place – to be physical connections to the land they’re born out of. I work with ceramics, utilising the variety of processes that can be used: throwing, slip casting, press moulding, hand-building. I allow each project I work on to inform the processes used. What is a constant thread throughout my work is the use of local materials, which are used as inclusions in the clay body or else as glazes – granite, basalt, limestone, wood ashes, turf ash. There are endless possibilities for what can be used and how it can be used, and the constant experimentation and learning that this creates is an important part of my practice.
– Simon Kidd
