A Spring Celebration : An installation of paintings and ceramics by Louise Kaye

First and foremost, I am a painter and a ceramicist. However, I like to challenge conventional approaches, and often expand to other mediums, creating bold and experimental artefacts in two and three dimensions. I approach paints, prints, and clay all in the same way - ceramics are fired, broken and collaged, just as paper and canvas are torn, glued, reassembled. Messy and difficult, gritty and irregular, my studio pieces probe the limits of beauty and redundancy. These crafts demand my courage and humility; paint and clay respond to mood, faithfully and unabashedly conveying emotion.

A Spring Celebration features a series of decorative and functional ceramics with my paintings. I crafted this installation with nature as my subject; it is a conscious and deliberate rejection of anthropocentrism. Flora and fauna inspire me greatly, and nature is never so beautiful as in springtime. In expressing the joy inherent in wild flowers, I wandered into the very depths of abstraction, interrogating both form and function. Buttercups, daisies and marigolds are boldly simplified, becoming cheeky, colourful, purposeful objects.

Always running alongside this jollity, however, lies the calamitous collapse of our natural environment. A reckoning looms beyond each piece, out of frame, yet ever-present. Viewers are repositioned from a state of conscious festivity into an uncertain vulnerability.

Despite this, nature continue to bloom. See the blossoms? Humble bees flitter around the florets, and fly off the stoneware..