Corrina Thornton

Corrina Thornton is an assistant professor in the focus area of ceramics and clay. Born in Wales, UK and now living in Risør, Aust-Agder. Her practice focuses on materiality, place and autobiography.

The focus of my work is concentrated over three main themes; place, matter and autobiography. These themes and the processes I use to investigate them lead me to engage in conversations between different materials and spaces. This can take the form of sculptural works, instillations, mapping, texts, video and drawing.

I often use repetitive making processes within my work and this functions as cathartic process, the act of doing and making clarifying thoughts and feelings. The audience are given clues to this within my titles, which often refer to a specific personal point in time and/or a physical place in which I am situated, that I am hoping to understand.

In recent years the focus has turned to questioning and trying to understand experiences. How we experience life events or physical interactions (esp. materiality/process/production) and how different states of being and different phases of life such as motherhood alter the way we feel about ourselves and experience the world.

My background in ceramics is always present, but now a variety of materials are open to me and I use a variety of species of matter, yet I feel very loyal to ceramics and its possibilities. It amplifies the haptic, it aches to be touched, but repels at the same time due to its break-ability. It takes the form of bodily extensions in day-to-day life, transporting fuel into and out of our bodies, within the structures we surround ourselves with; we have an intimate relationship with clay, we know how it feels in our hands, its weight and its density, but we also know its brittleness and its frailty.