Anna Barlow

Ceramicist

©Jose Esteve

©Anna Barlow

A visual feast

Anna is fascinated by food and the cultural significance of celebrations
She is inspired by rituals around indulgent treats
She freezes stories and memories in clay

Having had access to ceramics all through her schooling, Anna Barlow took the craft for granted. "It was always there," she says. However, as she began to shape her future, she realised that ceramics were her true calling. Today, Anna creates sumptuous sculptures with sweet, evocative titles. Ice creams captured in the process of melting, dripping doughnut glazes and sticky sweets come together in a medley of colour and texture to create one-off scenes of celebrations gone wrong. In her work, Anna aims to glorify everyday moments, while portraying an edge of gluttony and fantasy. Anna combines multiple types of clay, press moulding, slip casting and an array of glaze techniques to achieve the seamless cacophony of ‘visual edibility’.

Interview

©Jose Esteve

How did you find ceramics?: We had ceramics in school, and I recently discovered that my grandmother had had a dream to open a ceramic studio. She passed away a few days before I was born so we never met, but I feel there is something in my blood, a deep connection to this material.
After school how did you learn your craft?: When I finished school, I rented a space in a cow shed studio for a year. It had no electricity so I worked on a kick wheel and with an old gas kiln. It was pure hardship and I loved it! After that I went to study at university.
Could you explain your depiction of food through ceramics?: I try to capture intangible, frivolous moments. Everyday things that make life a bit better. For me, those memories are often linked with food. Ceramics are so permanent that it makes sense to me to capture the nostalgia of these moments in clay.
Do you use actual food to do this?: For cones, wafers, or doughnuts I make moulds of the food. For ice cream and icings, I have been developing clay recipes over the years to get the right consistencies, textures and flow to replicate real life. The realism of the elements is what makes the fantasy of frozen time convincing.

Anna Barlow is a master artisan: she began her career in 2006 and she started teaching in 2016