My sculptures have been taking me on their own journey.  The subject is usually the human body in all its shapes and sizes, usually torsos and heads, but also abstracted forms.  Invitations to USA, N.Z., to China and to India, have been as exciting as exhibiting in Australia – in Sydney where we live, but also in Victoria, in Perth and in towns like Gulgong and Crookwell.  It has been interesting to see how a head can identify a whole body.  There is joy in the investigation of clays, techniques, shapes and accidental differences, using glazes & primitive firings.  I love large & dramatic bodies, and movement in the shapes is all important.

Feyona van Stom is the President of The Sculptors Society.  Her sculptures feature in private collections throughout the world.

Libby Gilkes,Earth, Wind & Fire

LIBBY GILKES, CERAMIC ARTIST

“My ceramic practice has, for some years, been involved with the coastal environment in which I live, making hollow forms and vessels.

It is curious the way sea erodes and carves the rocks and those spaces that link and separate them, somehow evoke a silent relationship that fascinates me.…the tiniest spaces between rocks, the almost seam-like joints.

The local landscape of coastline and harbour is my starting point and is reflected in my vessels … reminiscent of stones and boulders shaped by wind and water..…repositories of stories, encounters, objects and feelings.

Potter and printmaker, forms and marks that transform the surfaces are reminders of nature’s forces, subtle and dramatic, determined by earth, raku fire and water. Fragile and wild all at once.”

In my ceramic practice the physicality and tactile nature of working with clay, and the layers of process – kneading, shaping, surface treatment & firings – are inseparable from the idea and form. They provide both the time to contemplate and the necessity to focus.

For these elements must exist in unity.

Libby Gilkes is a Northern Beaches based artist.  She studied Art Education at College of Fine Arts (COFA) University of NSW.  In 2015, Libby completed an Advanced Diploma in Visual Arts (Ceramics) at The Northern Sydney Institute TAFE, Brookvale/Northern Beaches Campus NSW.