Ally Powell

Ally Powell

Ally works from her home studio in Nottinghamshire, making the dynamic sculptures which she is best known for. Her tangled, knot-like forms have been shown internationally, as well as featured in interiors magazines and on the Financial Times, How to Spend It hit list. She studied at Nottingham Trent University, graduating in 2020. It was here she discovered her love for creating with clay and interest in pushing the traditional boundaries of ceramic practice.

Ally’s sculptures are produced in parian, a delicate and translucent type of porcelain. She uses the process of slip-casting which is typically a method used in mass production. However, in Ally’s hands it is subverted, as she created entirely one-off objects that endure. Her forms are a tangled line, suggestive of a brush stroke or scribble. They capture a sense of the spontaneous, fixed in time.

“At its heart, my practice aims push the boundaries of traditional processes to craft objects that provoke curiosity. My current body of work is a series of sculptures exploring what a drawn line might look like in three dimensions. Each of my sculptures are comprised of the same slip-cast curves, each cut up and reattached to create unique forms, playing with the narrative surrounding slip-casting as a mass production technique.”