Kate Malone (1959 – )

Kate Malone was born in London; she studied at Bristol Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art. After graduating she set up a studio in London and has recently acquired a studio in the country. Malone is concerned with organic forms and her work is strongly sculptural. Her pots take on the forms of vessels and although her works look as though they should function, that is not their prime motivation for Malone sees herself as a ‘maker of decorative objects’.

Malone's shapes - gourds, pumpkins, pineapples and the like - are drawn from nature and celebrate fecundity. She works with T material clay which is more often associated with industrial ceramics; this material is white and renders her glazes bright. She has a number of basic forms which begin as a coiled piece and are then, as she describes, "dressed, like people wearing different coats" with additions of press moulds and modelling on the surface. Malone uses a bright and vibrant palette that gives her works a strong visual impact. The interior glazes are applied with a slip trailer and swilled around, and the exterior painted with big brushes. The crystals are held in the glaze in suspension, the rising and lowering of temperatures in the kiln causes the crystals to grow in much the same way as they do in nature. Crystalline glazes are notoriously difficult to handle but they have a unique and uncontrollable beauty as they flow and collect making the opening of the kiln ‘like unwrapping a present’.

www.katemaloneceramics.com