FOUNDRY FELLOW #2

Anousha Payne

Anousha Payne b. 1991, lives and works in London. Her work explores the boundaries between personal experience, fiction and myth. Informed by Indian folkloric stories, it plays on ideas of the performative powers of objects and chance; the combination of moral dilemmas, magic, and animism alongside characters with transformative qualities.

Often deploying reptile skin, her ceramics are intended as hybrid objects, a reminder of the fluidity and shared qualities between humans, animals, the natural world and inanimate objects. Ceramic sculptures are adorned with jewellery and textiles, acting as cultural signifiers whilst questioning material hierarchies and values.

Another element to her work is storytelling through simple gestures and expressions, reflecting on human interaction and communication. The deployment of bharathantyam hand gestures are used as a way of connecting with cultural heritage, as well as being used for their known symbolic meaning

“This fellowship would greatly support in developing my practise at this time in my career; having begun to make more ambitious works, i feel extremely motivated to push this further through the use of bronze - I find the idea of translating contrasting soft/rippling clay textures into bronze sculptures extremely exciting.”

Proposed Work

‘Dogmother/Corleck Head’ will be in reference to the Corleck head, a Celtic (the other part of my heritage) Iron Age stone sculpture. The heads facing three ways are to represent the past, present and future, and will also represent the three generations of the matriarchal side of my family.

I would like to focus more on the human element of the character in terms of the shape of the head, but the texture to be furry. The fur would be created by extruding clay through my grandmothers Murrukku press, and I would like to translate the texture and sensation of clay being rippled and bent into bronze.