©Alun Callender
Phoebe Cummings is a British ceramic artist working primarily with clay in its raw state. She creates time-based installations that are extremely detailed, delicate, and multi-layered. Phoebe’s exquisite clay sculptures pulse with an irresistible energy as they gradually shapeshift over time shrinking, cracking, breaking, or sweating, falling to pieces and turning to dust. They are transient and temporary, reminiscent of the cycle of life. All her pieces are temporary and last only as long as each exhibition. In this way, her work defies easy categorisation, sitting somewhere between studio ceramics and performance art.
Winner of the British Ceramics Biennial Award (2011) and Woman’s Hour Craft Prize (2017) , Phoebe was awarded Honorary Doctorate by University of Brighton - School of Arts in 2019 and is Research Associate at the Ceramics Research Centre - UK, University of Westminster.
“Viewing one of Phoebe’s sculptures is like viewing an entire world. Hours can be lost observing the intricacies of the forms, each anemone-like tendril, each seed head, each delicate leaf. Yet there is also something poignant about the sculpture’s overt temporality and fragility. Over the course of an exhibition the viewer will see the work dry, crack, move and, in some instances, disintegrate entirely.”
“British sculptor Phoebe Cummings makes elegant, feathery sculptures that imply great age.”
“Phoebe Cummings uses unfired clay to make poetic and performative sculptures and installations that emphasize material, fragility, time, creation, and decay. ”