"Capturing Movement": On Daria Coleridge's Ceramic Sculptures
- gertrudelmgibbons
- May 8
- 5 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
by Gertrude Gibbons
Daria Coleridge's ceramic sculptures create internal dialogues. With forms that appear to furl and fold in on themselves, they evoke familiar shapes from nature: newly budding leaves, curled petals, ripples on a lake. These internal dialogues invite the viewer to closely observe the object, and in this way also appear to open themselves up for the viewer, creating a sense of optimistic openness.
Coleridge's emphasis, in her own words, is on "capturing movement". She has described to me the indirect influences of dance and music on her work. She notes an example of an interaction between art forms which made a particular impression on her: early in her career, whilst studying a sculpture diploma at Heatherley School of Fine Art, there was a brief to respond to Laban Dancers with sketches and ultimately sculptures, whilst they, as Coleridge recounts, "rotated and held positions, quick, quick, slow". The dancers in turn worked from the sketches responding with a spontaneous dance. This engaged Coleridge in the dynamic potential of collaborative exchange between art forms. Her description of the dance shows her attention to the sense of time and rhythm of this dancing.
Exuberant Mulberry (2024) shows a piece in a sensitive and dynamic shade of magenta, with a coiling shape upwards and outwards resembling the peel of a carefully prepared apple. The colour seems to move or spin with the shape in waves and ripples. Inevitably, this play with colour and form is given further play in the way light in any space will reflect on the glazed surface. This play is interrupted by the lines, which start almost in the imitation of a crack and rise upwards, broadening the gaps, as though freeing itself of gravity and solid form. There feels to me a connection also to painting, perhaps the shapes made as Lucio Fontana cuts through the canvas; it seems in some ways a gesture in clay to canvas. As such, it evokes natural forms but is also an independent object, openly gesturing towards its material nature and process of making.
Observing the creation of space and shape through movement and shifts in time appears a key point in Coleridge's practice. As dancers create illusions of shifting time and altered space, so ceramics might both capture and evoke these sensations too. Within Coleridge's pieces, the idea of rotation is especially important. Folding in, folding out. Circling in, circling out. She explains that as she strove for a "more fluid spontaneous abstraction, I delved into a period of creating rotating forms, trembling ruffles and undulating shapes in ceramics". Looking at the pieces, I feel an air of tension waiting for the enclosed space of the object to be thrown open; for the outside shell to be unfurled out and away from itself and reveal an interior space or offer its arm to the viewer in an invitation to dance.
Coleridge's early work was on bronze commissions of heads of children and dogs, capturing happy ephemeral moments such as small whisperings in an ear or exuberant laughter. This previous work with faces and expression is evident in the new work the artist makes today. Although she no longer works with heads, there is still an influence and implication of the human form. The ceramic sculptures at times bear resemblances to the shape of a human figure, and at other times a glimpse suggests the movement of hair behind an ear, interlaced fingers, embracing arms. In this way, I'm reminded of pieces by Barbara Hepworth, work which I think also shares with Coleridge a sense of awaited sound or voice for the silent object.
Coleridge is interested in the absorption of influences, their ingestion, digestion and how they come to be channelled through each individual in complex ways. She notes particularly the influence on the colour glazes she uses, influenced by the painter Clifford Still, glass-maker Fulvio Bianconi, jeweller Georg Jensen and artist James Turrell. These points of inspiration are not only the images of past artworks, objects, buildings, but also words spoken by family, friends, acquaintances. In particular, through her American-Italian heritage, the presence of art and design references from these landscapes are especially present; the photodynamism of the Italian futurists, and the work of Umberto Boccioni echo forward in her work. Her interest lies in the distinctiveness of the individual person, and how they interact with the intricate web of people, objects and world around them. The uniqueness, she tells me, "is what illuminates the individual as we interact and respond to each other like a dance". Her ceramic forms reflect on this, each unique objects that reflect something of individual existence and its interaction, in the manner of a dance, with those around them.
There is a perceptive contemplation between motion and stillness, the liquid and the solid, highlighted through the evocation of seascapes and rockfaces, water, wind, plants and stone. The naming of the works is an important part of Coleridge's creative process and the sculptures' coming into being. The pieces High Tide (2024) and Fly High (2024) have swirling forms that, as the title suggests, recall sails in the wind, also like furling leaves, whilst the colours are similar to different forms of canvas, stone or lichen. The naturally occurring irregularities in the colour bring life to the surface, suggesting molten and effervescing movement. Arctic Breeze (2024) responds to the Alps where the sharp rock face meets the soft snow; which, perhaps depending on one's mood, or how a viewer chooses to dialogue with the work, could also resemble another sculptural ceramic seascape, with the leaf-like forms playing about the surface of the sculpture like plants below the surface of the water. Blue Metallic Akimbo (2025) also evokes the sea in a different way, where the colours appear to drip or stream down the side of the object, as though enclosed by the glaze; or as though ink has been left to run in streams through clear water, and this object is a frozen creation of water, capturing a moment of mixing forms.
Coleridge has explained her work process to me; the initial sketch of three-dimensional ideas, before working up to scale, striving for a fluid shape in porcelain or clay and looking for light and airy structures, sensations of the translucence, with the chance to look through. Following this, she describes a "moment to abandon structural concentration and fly into a spontaneous action to awaken it to life and react to it afresh". Colour and the application of the glaze is an important part of the creative process, with one preferred method of the artist's being to pour on glaze on a turntable in order to give a spontaneous effect. Part of the excitement is the for the unknown: the surprise of the colour after the firing. This suggests an exchange between the artist and the material, creating a dialogue whereby the two respond to one another.
One thing I've remembered repeatedly from our conversations and I feel resonates in looking at these objects, is the idea of singing and paying attention to the details of one's own voice, the colour and tone of the sound from within. That exchange from the inside out, and the outside in, and how this provokes the telling of stories and memories. These ceramic sculptures are very human, speaking of interaction with nature, people and the space around them. They offer a dialogue and, in their elements of spontaneity and surprise, they comment on their material process of making, capturing their coming into being as a reflection on metamorphosis.
Open studio talk: As part of London Craft Week, Daria Coleridge will be in conversation with Gertrude Gibbons on 13th May at 4:30pm at 54 Ovington Street, SW3 2JB. Find out more: https://londoncraftweek.com/events/ceramic-sculpture-open-studio-and-exhibition/
Images courtesy the artist
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