Kevin Jenkins

Based in Plymouth, Kevin runs his own studio practice alongside teaching. "I returned to ceramics after many years of not practicing it, as an antidote to designing objects for mass production with their carefully planned and perfected surfaces and forms. It was a move away from the computer screen to the act of direct making and to the wide and peculiar attributes of certain types of mud as a material. Therefore, my work is contemplating the qualities of the material and the effects of stretching different techniques rather than applied pattern or decoration. It is largely experimental and influenced by Japanese principles of design and Nerikome which I feel are converging with the attitudes increasingly found in design in a post-industrial western society. In the future objects will have more value found in their personal or cultural meaning, they may be less disposable, more breakable, mended, imperfect, changed in their purpose and certainly unmistakeable in their not being factory produced. What does this mean to the nature of future objects and the act or attitudes to making and aesthetics? My objects could be seen as ancient or modern, damaged or imperfect or even just perfect.