Victoria Eden

 

Victoria Eden trained at Lancaster Art School and has worked as a potter in Cumbria for over 30 years. She and her husband Michael made domestic slipware supplying many shops and galleries both in this country, including Habitat and Liberty, and also abroad, where work went to Barneys USA and Japan. Their work was also featured in a number of international touring exhibitions. During their career together they also curated exhibitions, wrote an influential book on contemporary slipware and made a TV series on pottery making.

In 2006 Michael returned to University and Victoria taught ceramics and art, later becoming Head of Art at Casterton School , Kirkby Lonsdale. 

At the beginning of 2012 Victoria left teaching and started to make ceramics that were concept based using a range of clays and other materials, sometimes including found objects.  For the past few years her work has explored the theme of the Unknown Interior.

 

         

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.

Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities

 

"For the past few years my work has explored the concept of the unknown interior that is so well expressed by this quotation from Charles Dickens. It touches upon the difficulty of

 ever truly knowing the truth inside someone or something and for this reason my current strand of work is named “… that Profound and Secret Mystery”.

 

The pieces present a metaphorical narrative. They follow the progress of   Everywoman/Man as she/he moves through life and is formed not only by their genetic inheritance, but also by their natural and cultural environment. How a person seems to others may be very different from how they experience themselves, hence at the heart of everyone and everything there lies a mystery and the truth remains our own construct.

 

I use small apertures to represent DNA; look through the holes and you may see a little of the interior but not much. Similarly science may be able to unravel the secrets our DNA holds, but for most people it remains one of life’s unknowns.    

 

Ultimately our thoughts and personality are guarded within ourselves and these ceramic forms, so influenced by architecture, are metaphors for the unknown interior world of Everywoman/Everyman."