Jo Gifford
2026 – Taking part in Potfest Scotland – Scone Palace
Jo Gifford uses clay to explore ideas around boundaries, containment and categorisation. She is interested in how things are perceived, what defining characteristics encourage us to put things in different categories or lump them together as one. She wants to encourage the viewer to look more closely and question what they see, play with their expectations and prompt them to question what they are looking at and even their own categorisation and value systems.
With the vessel as a starting point she works in porcelain and stoneware to give a physical presence for her ideas to take shape. She uses a process led, material based practice where the hands on act of making is integral. Layering multiple processes beginning with the wheel thrown vessel, hand shaping and carving into this and then polishing to allow each piece to ‘become’. This leaves room for subconscious influences and the material itself to have a voice rather than forcing a preconceived idea. The slow repetitive process of working with the clay is also important; a way of slowing down, taking time and making something that holds time, care and the touch of the human hand within it. The resulting pieces are relatively small, a size comparative to the hand, of white porcelain or smoky pit fired stoneware. The outer surfaces are polished or burnished and some are glazed internally. They are not functional pieces, but more containers of space or time with rounded bottoms disrupting any use.