FRAGMENTED FIGURE
Account of the Scholarly Exhibition at the Centre of Ceramic Studies, Cardiff

Frances Woodley Statement

My practice is a peculiar activity and constantly interrupted. I don't know why I do it. It causes me confusion, unease, guilt and fear. My themes have recurred since I first stumbled across what turned out to be my practice, as opposed to a version of anyone else's. I recognised this when it happened and I can still recognise this as the moment when the things in my world repositioned themselves, that is, the moment when the way I which I viewed the world and its objects, changed. Since then I have consciously sought out a practice that has operated on the margins. I suppose this has meant that I was able to do as I wanted, keeping my head well under the parapet without having to make a reputation. In that sense I was able to conduct a fairly private practice. Teaching has taught me how little know, making the task more daunting still.

I have always looked at paintings, particularly Northern European religious paintings, made as it was, to encourage the experience of the extraordinary through the language of everyday life. The painting and object making of the Surrealists also play out this idea but with different and more erotic motives and motifs. The notion of fragmentation has existed as part of my vocabulary for many years. I have experienced it in the interrupted acts of making but have also used it as a process; of truncation as seen in traditional portrait sculpture, in the cutting up and rearrangement of the figure, in the depiction of the split between the corporeal and the imagination, and most recently, as a trope with which to interpret the sensation of fragmentation. It is perhaps through the depiction and act of fragmentation that fractures are created through which we are able to create new meanings and interpretations.

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