Biography
Rosie McLachlan is a UK-based artist, working primarily in ceramics. Engaging in a form of speculative world-building, McLachlan’s work draws on the past to imagine emergent, generative futures. Through elemental firing processes and creating a para-archaeological visual language, she makes sculptures that function as artefacts from these imagined worlds - forms shaped by the natural world and cycles of life, death and regeneration.
McLachlan’s ceramic works are wood fired over 4 days and nights in an anagama kiln, an ancient type of pottery kiln brought to Japan from China via Korea in the 5th century. This extended firing is both physical and devotional: a sustained act of attention in which flame, ash and atmosphere become active collaborators. Within the kiln, surfaces are subjected to intense heat and drifting wood ash, which settles, melts and forms a glaze. The resulting sculptures possess a votive, elemental presence.
Author and curator Stephen Ellcock writes, Rosie’s work references ancient traditions of funerary art, drawing upon her in-depth research into comparative mythology and pan-global cosmologies. At first glance these ceramics may appear to be familiar-looking souvenirs of a mythic, imperfect past, objects created with some inexplicable ritual purpose in mind, but the closer one looks the more alien and disconcerting the works appear, resembling nothing less than relics of a civilisation not yet born. Fieldwork for future archaeology.
Rosie McLachlan received her MFA from Newcastle University, and a BA in Archaeology from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, during which time she also studied at the Slade School of Fine Art, London.
McLachlan’s work has been exhibited by Arusha Gallery (London & Edinburgh), Cavin Morris Gallery (New York), Ohsh Projects (London), Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art (Sunderland), and Hatton Gallery (Newcastle), among others. Her work is included in public and private collections internationally. Recent acquisitions include The Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead.