Katerina Smoldyreva
A graduate of Bashkir State University, Russia, with MA in philology and literature, and having an intense interest in art and history, I developed interest in figurative sculpture and ceramic clays very early in my career.
Traveling the world, adapting to very diverse cultures, has long been a part of my life.
December 2018 has brought me to the Caspian shore - the city of Baku, Azerbaijan. I left New Zealand, which had an important impact on my work, and turned towards new horizons.
Before moving to New Zealand in 2016, I balanced my day job as a Head of Ceramics Arts Department and a sculpture tutor at the Dubai International Art Centre with personal creative work, which resulted in several solo and group exhibitions around the United Arab Emirates.
There have been an enormous change in my creative approach since I came to live in New Zealand. Rather than working with perfecting the surface, I am looking for those basic, rudimentary, primordial qualities of clay. Its versatility and “magic”, its stubbornness and pliancy. I am searching for the resonance between the body, material and idea.
My work is conceptual, and yet very perceptible and physical.
There are always two sides to each sculpture – the thin shell made of clay, cold and static, and those deeply human emotions, which it envelops. My desire is to reveal our vulnerabilities, anxieties and uncertainties behind that thin, fragile, skin-like capsule.
The clay is everything to me: I like to touch it, manipulate it, to feel its texture under my fingers. I am impatient of that moment when the form starts to appear and imagine how it would look like when the work is complete. It is always the ongoing experiment with form, texture and colour that excites me and makes me go on.