| Introduction |
I am a London-based sculptor and animator, interesting in combining clay stop frame animation and ceramic sculpture. I am exploring ways to breathe life into clay, and investigating what it is to be human.
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| What I Love about Ceramics |
I love clay’s plasticity, the fact that is can be kept moving when wet and is set in stone when kiln-fired.It allows me to investigate the fleeting and the eternal.
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| How I started with ceramics |
I fell in love with clay during an adult education pottery class in 2011. I decided to train in ceramics at Central Saint Martin’s art school in London so that I could learn as much as possible as quickly as possible about the discipline. In 2019 I graduated with a 1:1 BA in Ceramic Design, although I have an art-based practice.
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| What inspires me |
Jan Svankmajer is a key influence for me. Also Rodin and Anthony Gormley.
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| What I'm working on at the moment |
I am making work for a group show about Modern Slavery, to be held at Norwich Cathedral in 2022. I am making a double-headed janus bust/vase that will be about the victims of slavery who have been found harvesting daffodils in the UK. Plus a clay tablet expressing the percentage of corporations that believe that they have modern slavery in their supply chain. It is shockingly high.
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| My CV |
Jo Pearl studied International Politics at the London School of Economics in her twenties but having more recently fallen in love with clay, in 2019 completed a BA in Ceramic Design at Central Saint Martins. Although a long way from her first career in current affairs TV, there is a political red thread that runs her ceramic practice. Her work is concerned with the human condition, the problems we face.
Jo’s practice combines ceramic sculpture and clay stop-frame animation breathing life into the clay. A body of work inspired by Darwin’s lesser-known theories of the facial expression of emotions was exhibited in ‘Moving Darwin’, a solo show at the home of Charles Darwin, hosted by English Heritage in summer 2021. Her animation WhyTheFace?, was selected for screening by the International Film Festival of Fine Crafts in France and the Montreal International Animated Film Festival Animaze 2020, as well as exhibited in the solo show. ‘Moving Darwin’ highlights the contemporary relevance of Darwin’s theories as we struggle to understand each other in the COVID pandemic with our expressions obscured by face masks, and the increasing numbers of toddlers beginning nursery with a delayed understanding of facial expressions, linked to an over-use of flat screen devices.
Jo has shown in group shows at Pangolin London, The Potting Shed Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer, the Lethaby, San Mei, and Crypt Galleries, and the British Ceramics Biennial 2018 at the World of Wedgwood. She is a member of ceramic collective ACWU (The Associated Clay Workers Union) and exhibited with them at Gallery 46 Whitechapel in 2021 and the Link at Southwark Cathedral in 2017 and 2018.
In March 2022 Jo is taking part in a group show at the Hostry, Norwich Cathedral, with the charity Hope for Justice, investigating the problem of modern slavery.
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