Corrina Thornton

The use of matter - material voice collaborations, in my practice is firmly rooted and is used as a mirror to visualise the emotive and create affect through multidisciplinary practices including clay and ceramics, installation, sculpture, video, and drawing. How people experience and understand clay socially is used as a tool to articulate human experiences. For example, my sabotage of the “beautiful”, technologically advanced, and aspirational porcelain in various works. I aim to disrupt these associations and cause chaos in our perception and senses. Collaboration between clay’s agency and its constructed social meanings are often used in my projects. Clay has an amazing ability to capture moments and contain emotion because of its malleable nature whilst allowing contradictions to appear in its duality - stability and instability. This allows emotive unities, fractures, and disruptions to be embodied. I articulate my personal experiences through autoethnographic visual art on birth, motherhood, and mental health, making works which share the internal and emotional experience, allowing the being in and sharing of the unpalatable, the uncomfortable. Thereby exemplifying social and political commentary on the care offered to and the roles mothers play in society. The subject of birth, health and motherhood has multiple strands of relevance which impacts the whole of society. It is very important for me that my works are clear and direct, based in practical research and art making, and that the language I use to discuss and disseminate this work is honest, vulnerable, and direct, but also articulate. I want to use and discuss feelings as a valid content and motivation in visual art, whilst using the making of art as a research method, and as a reflective tool, and an instigator for change. Maternal care in Norway is being cut drastically and is currently a topic receiving increased attention. I hope to add my voice to this dialogue, for activating further discussion and change within cultural discourse and in the health care available for mothers and other primary carers.