Mimi Joung

Ceramicist

©Mimi Joung

©Sang Duk Bae

Colourful poetry

Mimi studied ceramics at Wonkwang University, South Korea
She trained with Martin Smith, Alison Britton and Felicity Aylieff
TS Elliot and Richard Brautigan are some of her sources of inspiration

For Mimi Joung, art is not a profession, it is a way of being. It is a practice and a form of poetry. It’s a reaction against commerce and the digital world. Fascinated by art since childhood, London based Mimi studied ceramics at Wonkwang University in her native Korea, then became an apprentice to a Canadian ceramicist outside Vancouver. After this experience, she moved to London to join the City Lit’s HND ceramic programme and to attend the Royal College of Art. Exploring language and meaning through making, many of Mimi's works are installation and situation projects, suggestive of landscape and stories, combining clay or glass sometimes bundled together with materials such as elastic bands, knitting wool, objects found in charity shops.

Interview

©Sang Duk Bae

©Mimi Joung

How did you become a ceramicist?: I was an artist from a young age but decided to develop my artistic practice around ceramics while studying for my art degree at Wonkwang University. Making allows me to create a wide discourse between language, meaning and human situations and relationships.
Do you master any specific techniques?: Process is important to me. My hands instinctively seek to resolve ideas through the act of making. I follow a playful approach, reflecting my own life, what I read and what I learn from other people and situations.
Does your Korean heritage influence your work?: My work builds on the history of Korean ceramic form, from white ware and porcelain to the moon jar and the Onggi pot. But it is not held back by tradition. My latest work is experimental both in meaning and in form.
What links your work to the written words?: I create sculptural pieces based on Richard Brautigan’s novel In Watermelon Sugar, by tracing each chapter of Brautigan’s surreal landscape. I'm also making a series of framed abstract pieces that reflect on the words and ideas expressed by TS Elliot in Four quartets.

Mimi Joung is a master artisan: she began her career in 1990 and she started teaching in 2005