Ahmed Farooqui

I have been working exclusively with clay over the past two years. It has been an intensely meditative and tactile experience, freeing me in some ways and allowing feelings and intuition to guide the direction of my work.

I use slab building techniques in all my work and everything is fired at earthenware temperatures. I started off with an aversion to making “pots” but found myself drawn to working with containers and cavities. Plump shapes sprout animal or human heads (the Anthromporphs series), bell shapes erupt into dancers with contorted limbs (the Dancers series), the warmth of terracotta invites exploration of archaeological forms (the Soulkeepers and small gods series), white clay calls for decorative flourishes and complex surface finishes.

Works flow from ideas and images I encounter in the world or as a reaction to previous works and preoccupations. This combined with an experimental approach using different clays, techniques and finishes leads to a diversity of forms and styles. I find this freewheeling process quite mysterious and it’s liberating not to hold myself accountable to intellectual constraints but simply surrender to the pleasure of making things.

There are traditions where a god is said to have moulded living things out of a clod of earth. Working with clay I feel I am a small participant in that primal act of creation with its endless possibilities and open horizons.