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In Asian culture bowls are philosophically connected with humanity; for example in Korea we might talk about how big a bowl you have in your mind, so the bowl is holding all your knowledge and experience. I mould the bowls in my hands and I draw straight onto them, with no plan, never changing a line. My vases are like many bowls coming together inverted into sculptures. Drawing directly onto these with a life model, with a human in front of me, I can be led by their energy and afterwards see what of human life can fit into a bowl. What I found drove me to use imagery on top to draw out stories imagined from the lives.
Yurim Gough
Cambridge, United Kingdom
"Yurim draws straight onto the surface of each piece. Life drawing in front of the living, breathing model joins the model's pose to the contoured surface of the piece."
I come from Korea, a country with a historic tradition of ceramics, where I was a fashion designer. By age 30 I had been designing high heeled shoes for over ten years in Seoul then in Tokyo and London. I emigrated to England in 2007, the first time I had set foot outside Asia. Learning English from scratch and being influenced by the radical change in culture I went back to being an artist, which was always my first calling. Starting with life drawing and experimenting with other media, I found myself drawn to my cultural roots in ceramics, mixing the two. In 2013 I made bowls and sketched live models drawing directly onto the contoured surfaces, combining the organic hand-moulded form of the bowl with the human form of the model. A couple of years later I began to add imagery to the pieces to extend the narratives that began with the poses, seeking inspiration from what I found captured in the drawings.In Asian culture bowls are philosophically connected with humanity; for example in Korea we might talk about how big a bowl you have in your mind, so the bowl is holding all your knowledge and experience. I mould the bowls in my hands and I draw straight onto them, with no plan, never changing a line. My vases are like many bowls coming together inverted into sculptures. Drawing directly onto these with a life model, with a human in front of me, I can be led by their energy and afterwards see what of human life can fit into a bowl. What I found drove me to use imagery on top to draw out stories imagined from the lives.
Wescover creator since 2019
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