"I have come to a point in my work where I am almost exclusively making work for exhibition. The content of my work, although always rooted in a tradition of wheel-thrown vessel making, has deepened, and I feel the work, still always domestic in scale and purpose, is best seen only by itself; presented as still life, or installation, to give strength to its voice’... ‘They are as much for contemplation as for use. They are as much for use as for contemplation’
'I no longer care if the cup, with its careful handle and balanced weight (the heritage of years of tea set making), stands unused among a quiet group of table-top objects arranged as a still life, somewhere higher than table height. It is still a cup – an everyday object as ordinary and simple as can be – but from somewhere, because of its tense or tenuous relationship with other simple, recognised, even banal objects, pleasure comes. I am surprised. It is a weird idea. It is not what I thought my work would ever be about when I tried to live like the unknown craftsman in a hamlet in France, or a hillside in Tasmania. It is alarmingly contradictory; to make pots that are sweet to use and then place them almost out of reach. To make beakers that are totally inviting and then freeze them in an installation'
Gwyn Hanssen Pigott