Kate Malone.A Celebration of Clay

An overview of the ebullient forms created by ceramist Kate Malone: colourful Pumpkins, Fennels, Gourds and Atomics, leaves, fruits, flowers and garlands.
Kate 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; it is white and renders her glazes bright. She has a number of basic forms that begin as coiled pieces 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 swirled around, and the exterior painted with big brushes. The crystals are held in the glaze in suspension, the rising and lowering of temperature in the kiln causing them 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".
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 focuses on organic forms and her work is strongly sculptural. Her pots take on the forms of vessels and although they look as though they should function, that is not their prime motivation: Malone sees herself as a "maker of decorative objects".