The primary theme of the ceramic objects that I produce focuses on the female body as a metaphoric container for life, death and magic (which together encompass everything).
Influenced by the books, The Language of the Goddess and the Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe by anthropologist Marija Gimbutas, I create vessels that can be used as ritual objects, or as mementos of a time gone by. The forms are predominantly inspired by Paleolithic female figures like the Venus of Lespugue, the conceptual ideology of Kongo minkisi, Polynesian god-sticks and Ife divination tappers. The forms are made from a press mold and sagger or pit fired, depending on what is available to me.
I moved from Jamaica to Florida in the mid-eighties and have lived there, on and off, since.
Love the pieces, especially the first one. It makes me think about female mutilation, which may or may not be the response you were looking for.
It is easy for society, people to be conditioned to respond to particular images in popular culture, be it through an educational cable program, text books or fictional films, in a certain way that can exclude any real or in depth understanding of that particular "image."
Dualities in certain cultures exists as a way, form to include rather than exclude. Functions overlap while retaining their fundamental source of energy. These are not what you will find on the Discovery, Military or Comedy channel.
Artist Simone Clunie's works seem to radiate and echo pasts and presence through the most organic forms and material. They are examples of that concrete sublime we miss during the storm.
"it is not absence that makes mystery ancestors"
-Tupac