Jackson’s sculptures rise like tectonic memorials, skywards, but they are swollen with echoes of memory. The globular, billowing forms seemingly set in stone like miniature cathedrals, calling « maternal bond », « child ». These emotive works tell stories like landscapes; they are feminine and daring, reverberating with what it means to be a woman — the fragility and strength interwoven like elements of an architectural whole. The power of Jackson’s work lies in its ability to say two things at the same time. And in its ability to pull at us and move at something within, for each piece has been distilled to its essence like a line of poetry. Exquisite fragments of a much larger conversation. The beauty of this body of work can be found, in part, in each viewer’s ability to privately explore a larger, prompted conversation of their own. One might hear the whistle of isolated, sand-beaten desertscapes, or the murmurs of the sea against black rock. Or one might hear nothing but the silence one remembers from staring at a mountain in childhood. One might see igneous rock, or rain-smoothed crevice, or dune, or the arms and swollen belly of a mother.

Each of Martine Jackson’s sculptures is deeply complex; hand-coiled in gyratory movements from the base upwards, orbiting around a centre whilst expanding and returning with the contours of the sculpture’s waist. The pieces start as a drawing, or as a tiny clay maquette — for nothing is left up to chance when it comes to Jackson’s practice. The composition of each piece is meticulously constructed and considered; resulting in forms that, when viewed from any angle, are gracefully proportioned and evenly balanced. Each element of the composition flows into the other, like architectural components that support each other, or ripples in a river, or soft, synchronised notes in a symphony. Each segment within an artwork speaks to the other segments; creating a sense of unity in the composition that is made up of multiples. This adds intricacy to the work, for they exist as their own miniature, untamed landscapes — countries with their own distinct languages, and the titles act as peepholes into Jackson’s universe. Indeed, some borrow from the furthest, isolated corners of our natural world, windswept and seemingly caked in desert sand, whilst others become monolithic, and others still, take deep anatomical breaths.

The form of the sculpture and the texturing of its surface are equal parts within Jackson’s expression; two separate conversations joined together — resulting in work that is profoundly layered and sophisticated. Martine Jackson inherited, moved away from and returned in various stages to the teachings of her late mother, Barbara; hearing her mother’s voice and gradually, learning to listen to her own. Today, many of Martine Jackson’s sculptures hold the bulbous form reminiscent of Barbara’s work — a quiet tribute, or remembrance of history. For all ceramic artists are imbued with the hands that taught them, however positively or painfully those teachings came. And in the ceramic arts, there is often some pain in its mastery. A bittersweet art form that, when seen at this level — with the monumentality of the size of this new body of work by Jackson — is almost miraculous, but most certainly breathtaking. It is a body of work that maps the contours of the artist’s life; her relationship to clay, her mother, and the restless pursuit of a deeper understanding of herself.