Digging: Handling the layers of material politics through the excavation of local clay soils

This thesis investigates an expanded ceramics practice: one that engages with the politics of place. I operate a methodology of place-based digging, in which I excavate, process, remediate and garden with argillaceous soils, both in situ and through the studio. These investigations act to compliment and complicate ceramics practice, particularly those concerned with ‘sustainability’. Engaging with place brings important tensions to the fore: namely the entanglement of clay with unceded Aboriginal Land, and with extractivism and productionism. My four conceptual frameworks: sedimentation, decomposition, contamination, and siltation, offer re-imaginings for a pit-to-product dynamic, presenting modes of working which are cyclical and collective.