Biomorphic Tendril

Astrid Dahl explores light, purity and symmetry in large botanically inspired earthenware forms. The artist studied Fine Art at what is now the Durban University of Technology, graduating in 1999. Dahl demonstrated an early love for clay and hand-coiling at university and found a visual impulse in botanical photography from the early 20th century. Working increasingly with her own natural environment, pulling images from her garden, her white and black clayworks are large, heavy, but defy themselves with their appearance of lightness. Dahl’s vessels are meditations on vessel-making itself; they do not defer to a symbolic language but allow each object to inhabit itself entirely. Dahl pursues a perfect, essential form, outside of time and place. The artist’s work is housed in private collections both locally and in France, England, the United States and Australia and has been featured at the Barnes Foundation in Paris.