The Last Structure

The Last Structure forms part of the artist's ongoing modular ceramic practice, in which sculpture develops through a sustained dialogue between intention, material behaviour, and chance. The work combines slip-cast ceramic bricks, experimental glazes, red thread, and a wooden stool recovered from a residential building in Kharkiv, Ukraine, damaged during Russia's full-scale invasion and later dismantled.

The ceramic elements were produced over several years through mould making, slip casting, repeated firing, glazing, and structural testing. Broken, fractured, and deformed bricks are retained rather than discarded, allowing pressure, instability, and accidental transformation to remain materially present. Some fragments are loosely suspended by red thread, held in a temporary state between fracture and collapse. Two bricks fused permanently during firing are preserved as a single element, recording the kiln's agency within the making process.

The surfaces bring together distinct material histories. Crackle glazes echo the weathered skin of the stool, while one brick incorporates gold lustre tracing the symbolic path of the River of Life. Two single-fired bricks contain iron-rich soil collected in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, and bear hand-painted reinterpretations of visual symbols associated with the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture.

Generous spacing between the fragments allows each element to retain its presence within the structure. Through modularity and continual reconfiguration, the work resists a final or resolved form. Each installation becomes another stage in its life, where damage is neither concealed nor repaired into coherence, but remains active within an evolving sculptural system shaped by fracture, memory, material agency, and the possibility of rebuilding.