Gaenor Hall is a mixed media artist working in clay, encaustic wax, graphite, and monochromatic paint. Her direct and visceral style uses materials to convey a deeply felt, embodied sense of experience.
She moves fluently between mediums, supported by a strong technical understanding of materials developed during her time as a Ceramic & Glass Conservator for National Museums Liverpool. She holds an MA in Ceramics and a BA in Three-Dimensional Design (wood, metal, ceramics, and plastics).
Born in Liverpool, UK, where she lives and works, Hall is a frequent visitor to the West Coast of Ireland. The landscape there exerts a profound influence and forms an integral part of her work.
Her ceramic work is innovative and dynamic, pushing the boundaries of the material. She uses clay in a semi-liquid state to produce expressive, fluid forms. The scale of her work ranges from large abstract sculptural pieces to intimate porcelain vessels with exquisite, diffused surfaces.
Recently, her encaustic works have adopted a slower, more contemplative process. Natural objects are encased and layered within wax and polished graphite, resulting in haunting, intricate pieces that speak of memory, preservation, loss, and time.
Hall continues to divide her time between Liverpool and Ireland, gathering source material and developing new work in her studio. Her work is held in private collections, including those of Ashley Thorpe, collector and author of Contemporary British Ceramics: Beneath the Surface, and Professor Michael Parkinson CBE.
At its core, my work is a response to living - to memory, loss, the slow unfolding of time - and the quiet beauty that runs through them, each piece an attempt to hold and communicate that awareness in form.
I am drawn to the innate qualities of materials: how they are handled - touched, pressed, and formed - can open a space where a piece is felt rather than described.
What interests me is that which hums beneath the surface: atmosphere, stillness, solidity, and resonance. I am therefore less concerned with literal representation and more with revealing an underlying quality - something sensed, remembered, and silently known.
These concerns underpin my practice across a range of materials, although the pace of making shifts with each medium. I often use drawing and sketching as a starting point for making three-dimensional pieces. The immediacy of a drawn line or ink wash enables me to work quickly and instinctively, capturing qualities I feel are essential in the moment.
More process-led pieces, such as those made with encaustic wax or clay, require a deeper understanding of the material itself - the way it behaves and holds form. I work with clay in a solid to semi-liquid state, which allows me to construct pieces while capturing instant, gestural marks.
I’m embracing a slower approach in my recent encaustic work, enjoying the interaction and ongoing conversation as the material transforms its state from solid to liquid - at times organic and fluid - before cooling, encasing and preserving, holding the fluidity as a memory in its newly solid form.
Earlier works tracing the development of process and material.
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