The Arsenic Pots 2018

‘Arsenic Pots’ the pursuit of beauty.

 

When creating work these pots I drew upon a long-standing interest in the concept of ‘beauty’ and the lengths groups and cultures have go to, too preserve and increase it. Historically the practice of using poisonous substances in fashion, beauty products and domestic ware were widespread. Laird’s Bloom of Youth, causing Lead palsy in at least three documented cases, Mercurial Hats impairing the neuro-motor system, causing uncontrollable shaking and of course Arsenical greens.   

William Morris said “have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful” Whilst in agreement to this, what if those beautiful and useful things were also dangerous and potentially life threatening?

This series of pots go some way I hope to illustrating this point and also the juxtaposition between an item of aesthetic value also being knowingly sinister. The glaze colour is representative of the kind of colours created by using arsenic within the glaze recipe and forms of the pots are loosely derived from apothecary jars, suggestive again of the historical context of the work.