Ikuko Iwamoto makes exquisite cups and other objects for a ‘bizarre’ tea ceremony. They suggest the everyday, the ordinary, but are in fact extra-ordinary.
They are the vehicle to make visible an invisible, microscopic world. A world of intricacy and detail, of mathematical pattern and organic chaos, of beauty and repulsion.
Ikuko Iwamoto is a London-based Japanese artist who uses porcelain to create eccentric table top pieces and sculpture. Her fundamental inspiration comes from intricate and fragile looking structures, and odd forms found in microscopic world.
Her typical work involves using a slip-casting technique, which process includes plaster model and mould making to create a hollow body, and spikes and piled-up dots are often obsessively attached to create tension, fragility and flows. Also, additional materials such as coiled telephone cables, metal wires, and hypodermic needles are frequently incorporated into her porcelain forms with her wall piece sculptures.
In October 2018, she initiated a project to create 100 shapes of slip-casted vases over the next 4-5 years (approximately a couple per month), and its progress can be seen on her YouTube channel “IKUKO 100” where she regularly posts her short films.
She is the winner of the 2019 Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize hosted by gallerist Cynthia Corbett.
Notable exhibitions include Collect at Saatchi Gallery, RA summer show, and her work is in several public collections including the V&A and Manchester Art Gallery.
