Made at the European Ceramic Work Centre.

Glazed ceramics.
73 × 28 × 46cm

The concept of mimesis or imitation of nature is inescapable in these ceramic sculptures molded from cartoonish dinosaur balloons. Dinosaurs have long disappeared, living only in popular imagination, and the airy image I focused on is millions of years removed from the fearsome eight-tonnes triceratops it suggests to portray. While lacking dinosaur DNA leaves scientists no hope of reviving the pre-historic creatures, they are very serious about other extinct species, like the woolly mammoth or the western black rhino. Endearing as these dinos may be, they instil a profound sense of loss and melancholy over our apparent inability to avert it.

Text by Nanne op ’t Ende.