Anna Barlow makes sculptures using realistic ceramic representations of ice cream, cakes and other sweet foods as a basis to tell a story or to build a fantasy around food.
It is the juxtaposition of temporary ice cream and permanent ceramic that inspire Anna to produce one in the other. To solidify a fleeting, melting moment and highlight a relationship between the soft and the solid.
Anna has developed techniques to highlight the nature of clay and glaze to mimic edible items. She enjoys working with ceramic materials that already possess the quality of the food that she aims to recreate. The dry texture of high fired porcelain translates into wafers, whilst a silky opaque glaze’s own desire to run and drip, achieve the final melting results.
Whilst creating her sculptures, Anna utilises many traditional techniques to manipulate clay. A combination of mould making, slip casting, press moulding and hand modelling are used together with an icing bag and scoop to put clay through similar processes to real confections and create varied energies within one piece.
“The rituals and culture around the eating of sweet food continue to fascinate me. An undercurrent of competitivity, anxiety, consumerism and performance is usually lurking beneath the surface of a three tiered ombre butter cream piñata cake. Age old fears, joys and tragedies tend to go hand in hand with a gathering of people around a cake…”
Anna Barlow was born in Bristol and is currently living and working in London. Anna has a BA (Hons) in Ceramics by the Bath Spa University College and has exhibited her work in galleries across the world.
