Aneta Regel

Aneta Regel’s abstract ceramic sculptures express themes of metamorphosis, conflict and change. The artist-as-alchemist combines stoneware and porcelain clays with volcanic rock to create a composite of embattled existence; multiple layers of the same elements in different states are repeatedly dried and re-fired, pushing the materials to their limits in the kiln, testing their malleability and density, strengths and weaknesses. Aneta comments that this process ‘emphasises the materials’ capacity to be modified, which perhaps equates to not only our own ontology but also to the way we interact with objects and one another.’

The artist’s work is fundamentally informed by her personal story; she is part of the last generation who can vividly remember the post-communist era in Poland and its dramatic end. That time of transition and contrast has greatly influenced her life and work since. As such, her ceramic sculptures also embody themes of memory and the passage of time; displacement and nostalgia for her family home and its surrounding countryside. This connection to landscape can be read in her work, as she educes the visual power and textures of the natural world; the rhythms and energies in mountains, trees and riverbeds, and, deeper still, the powerful underground transmutations of the earth.