Sibyl is the illicit, reflexive, female voice telling of things to come. She reappears in many guises: as a siren, St Anna, the old crone of fairy stories. and latterly Mother Goose. These stories, like my vessels, often engage with themes of lightness and darkness, premonition and domesticity, represented here through the ceramic vessel.

The work falls into two groups; oil lamps (sibyl’s eye) and bowls (sibyl’s garden).

The oil lamps are made from earthenware and glazed with milk, used to seal ceramics since Neolithic times. I have fused the seeing eye with an ancient ceramic vessel, the oil lamp. Sibyl's speech is barbed hence the rose thorns. She speaks in flames.

Sibyl carries over themes present in my earlier work, picturing. Here black clay introduces the reflexive element subtly interrupting the narrative of ceramic which is naturally sweet. The vocabulary of ceramic craft is used to engage and question.

This work is informed by amongst others, a childhood of folk tales, Angela Carter novels, Marina Warner's writings; particularly her book, From the Beast to the Blonde on Fairy Tales and their Tellers, Moira Vincentelli's book, Woman and ceramics, gendered vessels and Roland Barthe's readable and moving book Camera Lucida, where he explores memories of his deceased mother through a narrative on photographic practice.