Alice Vanessa Foxen

Alice Foxen is an artist, living, working and playing in London since 1990. 

In 2013 she graduated with a BA (Hons) in 3D Materials Practice, specialising in ceramics.

Her love for making and materials, combined with growing up in a city, has driven a lifelong search for discarded objects and materials found in public space. She sees the beauty in the stuff other people don’t notice. Her work in clay and other materials has taken her to residencies at the International Ceramic Research Centre in Denmark and The Vermont Studio Centre in the USA. Her work has been shown at the British Ceramics Biennale and internationally in group exhibitions.

While studying at the RCA, Alice’s material journey has developed through playful research. She continues this journey from her studio in Bermondsey.  

Walking through urban space makes me curious. The street is always in flux and I am always searching for overlooked objects and leftover materials. Stuff in chaotic harmony, traces of activity on the street that sparkle for me. These encounters with objects are my personal connection with public space. I gather them up as memories, sometimes snapping a photograph to record the moment.

To be in a state of flux is to constantly change and to mix with other things. Forces meet, boundaries blend, materials react. My layers of collected memory form a landscape that I explore in clay, with other materials joining in. My sculpture is on the move, in a tussle between structural control and fluidity.

Where have these objects have come from, are they familiar, do they spark your curiosity?