Ceramic objects that piece together fragments of pasts and speculative futures into contemporary artefacts
Artist Statement
In her practice, Sterre treats ceramics as time capsules: ancient objects that intimately connect us with our distant history. But also, objects that can tell stories of our time and live into the distant future.
She makes objects that collage aesthetics from both the past and speculative futures: jewelled chalices of the Middle Ages, bolted metal plates referencing both machinery and armor and the bright optimism of 60s retro-futurism. This, to create an image of our present time, in which the internet flattens cultural history, treating ancient past and speculative futures as equal raw materials for our current identity.
The results are pieces that read as relics and as gadgets at the same time.
Bio
Sterre Troquay is a contemporary ceramicist, based in Amsterdam.
She holds a degree in Fine arts of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie from which she graduated in 2021. Since a few years she specialised in making ceramics. Each piece is wheel-thrown and altered by cutting and adding, allowing traces of making to remain visible.
The results are unique pieces that exist between function and sculpture.
Process
Sterre throws the initial shape on the wheel. After that starts a process of altering the pot by cutting lines and shapes and adding elements onto the surface. In many cases coloured slips or terra sigillata are added before bisque firing. The piece is then finished with glazes and underglazes in the second, glaze, firing.
throwing the form
altering it and applying slip
the first, bisque, firing
applying the glaze
final piece removed from kiln