Adele Walsh is a ceramic designer-maker currently completing a BA(Hons) in Fine Art; Ceramics and Glass at the National College of Art and Design. Adele’s love of nature and found objects is the primary inspiration for her work. Each work emerges through a process of thinking through material responding intuitively to the tactile nature of the materials used.  

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My love of nature and found objects are the primary inspiration for my work.  Words used to describe my work would include: texture, tactile and organic. The rugged Irish landscape, particularly the beaches and rock formations around our coast, provide an abundance of inspiration for my forms, textures and glazes.

My current focus is inspired by found objects that drifted in with the tide.  These include driftwood, rusted iron and, in particular, the lost (or possibly abandoned) identity card of a Syrian boy named Haider that I found on a Turkish beach last summer.  The identity card took me on a journey exploring the concept of displacement.

The spoon was the starting point, a recognisable tool that we pick up daily, both for nourishment and for sharing our food, a metaphor for lives that have been damaged by displacement and lack of emotional nourishment, triggering anxiety and trauma.

Each spoon is glazed in a selection of dry, crawl and volcanic glazes. The materials used in making up the glazes are toxic hence the spoons cannot be used as a functional tool. When glazed, the spoons have a rusty appearance and a textured surface as if each piece has been through a difficult journey.