Livia Garrod is in her final year of study in Fine Art at the University of Leeds. Originally from the Suffolk coast, her work is constantly informed and influenced by this landscape. As well as Leeds, where the artist has plans to settle and continue to build an identity within the creative community of the city after finishing her studies.
Her work explores the tension between intellectuality or knowledge and intuition or know-how towards materials. The visceral quality of wild clay orders an instinctual material understanding, developed in conversation with the spontaneous behaviour of the clay.
Allotment Pots I to V are a small insight into the artist’s ongoing investigation of wild clay. Each pot starts as earth at the bottom of a hand-dug hole on a community allotment, before being filtered through repurposed kitchen utensils and hand-built into their vessel forms in a slow and nurtured process.
Sounds from the Ground chronicles the unexpected, organic noises made by the clay during this process. Ceramicists talk about listening to the clay to understand and collaborate with the material. Livia’s work is constantly developing in conversation with the quality, nature, and behaviours of the clay, allowing this to direct the form it takes next.
