Zoe Preece was born in South East England, UK, in 1973. She now lives and works in Wales, with her studio based at Fireworks Clay Studios in Cardiff, UK.
Zoe Preece takes the domestic realm as the site of her enquiry. She makes intimate but nameless still lifes that speak of the ordinary and the human. Through focused attention on everyday do-mestic objects and ordinary scenes, her work endeavours to engage with the intangible, disquiet-ing and emotive aspects of life through material processes and form.
Ceramic forms are carved from plaster on the lathe or by hand, before being moulded and cast in a fine white liquid porcelain; the heat of the kiln chamber is used to seek out moments of fluidity. Spoons containing a precise balance of porcelain and flux are caught at a tipping point in the heat of the kiln chamber.
Within the series I loved you all day, Preece has momentarily pressed the pause button; spoons filled to the brim and overflowing are fixed in mid air, flowing liquid caught mid drip.
“The whiteness and stillness of these forms is intended to elicit what is absent, our interior experience – the unset-tling, intimate and tender – our sensory memory.”
Zoe Preece studied Ceramics in her first degree at Cardiff School of Art and Design (2000), completed a Masters in Ceramics also at Cardiff School of Art and Design (2010), and a PGCE (FE/HE) at Cardiff University (2013).
She works as ceramic tutor for UWC Atlantic College. Zoe has exhibited both nationally and internationally. She was selected for AWARD, British Ceramic Biennial (2019), was awarded the Gold Medal for Craft and Design, the CASW Purchase Prize and the Josef Herman Award The People’s Choice at Y Lle Celf at the National Eisteddfod of Wales (2018) and was a juror prize winner in the international exhibition Materials: Hard and Soft, Denver, US (2017).
Her work is in public collections in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff and the Museum of Craft and Design, Denver, US. Zoe currently has work on show in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff as part of the exhibition, The Rules of Art? and at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea in her solo exhibition In Reverence.