Maria McStay

My practice is based in ceramics, sound, and site-specific materials to create installations that invite reflective engagement with the environment. Rooted in personal experience, I draw on past and present temporalities to navigate relationships between family, memory, place, and material. Engaging with ancestral methods of making and marking, I adopt ancient hand-building techniques and pulverise rocks to create mineral pigments for colouring ceramics. I draw historical reference from utilitarian forms of storage and transportation, specifically Amphorae jars (c. 7000), whilst disrupting and distorting their purpose by placing handles in unconventional positions, subverting the vessels into ambiguous objects that blur past and present. By animating objects and playfully reimagining ancient utilitarian forms, my work bridges historical and contemporary practices. I explore the anthropomorphic vessel to express personal narratives, shaped by change and separation.