My Goddess Sculpture

Yurim Gough is ceramic visual artist who comes from Korea, a country with a historic tradition of ceramics, where she was a fashion designer and had been designing high heeled shoes for over ten years in Seoul then in Tokyo and London. She emigrated to England in 2007, the first time she had set foot outside Asia. Learning English from scratch and being influenced by the radical change in culture she went back to being an artist, which was always her first calling. Starting with life drawing and experimenting with other media, She found herself drawn to her cultural roots in ceramics, mixing the two. In 2013 she made bowls and sketched live models drawing directly onto the contoured surfaces, combining the organic hand-moulded form of the bowl with the human form of the model. A couple of years later she began to add imagery to the pieces to extend the narratives that began with the poses, seeking inspiration from what she found captured in the drawings. In Asian culture bowls are philosophically connected with humanity; for example in Korea they might talk about how big a bowl you have in your mind, so the bowl is holding all your knowledge and experience. Artist Statement My art practice explores humans’ complex emotions, different feelings and thoughts; it is concerned expressing the subconscious mind in my artworks. Life drawing in front of the living, breathing model is very important and it helps me to understand the humanity that bridges between reality and the idealistic, by joining the model's pose to the contoured surface of the ceramic piece. The lines from the model are communicated on the rough texture of the hand-built stoneware with a ceramic pencil, never changing a line. The jagged lines soften under glaze. Subsequently, a variety of colourful images are layered on top of the life drawing. I make them translucent with the human body visible underneath. Mixing my lifelong love of life drawing with ceramics in a unique way as a self-taught artist. I use traditional methods and combine with modern methods such as using 3D-printed parts for the ceramics or creating digital art to apply via transfers. My ideas are hugely influenced by modern society, current issues, especially recent trends and electronic information received from social media.