Tracey Johnston

I am a ceramic artist with an interest in landscape and an anthropological approach to research. I seek to make work that reflects the Ulster coastline and our emotional need to walk its shores and swim its waters. My most recent works, sometimes thrown from local clay, respond to sites on the west coast of Strangford Lough. The pandemic has brought me to join a community of local wild swimmers. Swimming with these women has provided an insight into the importance of these liminal spaces, between earth and water, in shaping our notions of place and belonging. Interactions with the other swimmers has fuelled and inspired me to produce a body of work which I hope speaks of life, nature, mental health and survival.