James Hayes - Paternity Suite 2

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Artwork by Lorraine Whelan & James Hayes

JAMES HAYES : PATERNITY SUITE 2

"PATERNITY SUITE 2002 - 2003"
By furthering the PATERNITY SUITE body of work post-birth, I am examining my own responses to this new (alien?) experience of fatherhood and all the natural (universal?) paternal instincts that follow with it. The PATERNITY SUITE works created pre-birth showed the abstract concepts and emotions I was wrestling with at the time, and were presented as pristine, iconic images. By contrast my most recent works created for PATERNITY SUITE post-birth reflect the reality of nurturing my growing daughter.

These new works grow out of my own experimental approaches to working with ceramics and bronze, developed over the past 6 years involvement with the Umha Aois projects (see CV). These new sculptures present paternity in its purest, ancient forms, in images that speak to us from the very beginnings of humanity. Each ceramic figure is created specifically to be used as a crucible to melt and pour the bronze for the accompanying child figure, thus expanding on the idea and deepening the connection between the figures. The glazes on the ceramic figures are a result of the experimental firing process and are completely unique from what is possible in a standard ceramic kiln fired process.

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