Suffering
This work continues my study of movement, time and aging. It pays homage to the human body as it changes with age, exploring fragility and the way the forces of time, memory and movement impact upon it. This work explores the paradox of a fragile, enduring thing – the body, the mind, the natural world, and the materiality of clay itself – which simultaneously holds movement and time. Through the clay, this work draws a parallel between a sense of physical and mental deterioration and the corroding of the natural world.
Deb McKay has worked in Fashion and Interiors for 20 years before she came to ceramics. Her background in these artistic fields have led her to explore, tone, texture, repetition, pattern, symmetry and design, it is with these skills that she was drawn to an artistic practice. Largely self-taught, McKay began working with clay in October 2018. In this short space of time, she has received acclaim in the prestigious 2020 Waterhouse Natural Science Exhibition at the South Australian Museum receiving a highly commended award. Winning the Waterhouse Emerging Art Prize category in 2022. McKay was selected as a finalist in the 2022 Deakin University Small Sculpture Award McKay and was selected as a Finalist in the 2021 Inaugural National Emerging Art Prize for ceramics. Her work is held in a number of private collections both nationally and internationally.
