Wildfire Ash, Reduction Fired Stoneware

2025

‘I hope it works/ Material Dances’ presents a series of objects which perform, both in terms of function and theatre – their ability to tell stories. This is intensely distilled in Duet, a bar of soap and a dish to hold it, both made with ash left in the wake of wildfires in Evia, Greece in the height of summer, 2024.

I travelled to Evia’s hot, blackened landscape days after these devastating fires. Dust clinging to our sweat, I listened to accounts of the verdant island it was, the incremental parching of the land as temperatures rise globally and the political, natural and human consequences of now reoccurring floods and fires.

I washed the ash, skimmed off the caustic lye that bubbles out at first and, ordinarily discarded, used it to make this bar of soap. With the sieved and dried, powdery remnants I make a glaze. It pools in the finger marks of a momentary movement, enacted with the playful ease of a jazz musician. Made permanent in the intense heat of the kiln, in this gesture I implicate myself.

Yet unused, a rectangle of soap, willing us to remain in the present, smells only of its composite materials. Its cut edges are an invitation: wash, smooth its corners between your palms and leave the traces of your hand in mine.