Biography and Statement

Kyla McDonagh

Artist Biography

Specialist training in ceramics led Kyla McDonagh to investigate forms through the medium of clay. Graduating from the University of Ulster with a First-class BA Honours Degree in Fine and Applied Arts, she was awarded a prize by the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts.

Her work has drawn influence from Palaeolithic engravings and symbols. The forms are basic. Some present as bone-like effigies, others pertain to stone, featuring schematic etchings or spirals. Modelled in porcelain and stoneware clay by hand, the ceramic bodies retain vitrified anatomical imprints. The simplicity of the designs contrast with the complexity of their essence. The receptacles feature engraved cryptic messages and text bound up within paper scrolls. Sealed behind glass, these curated, mixed-media displays represent hidden knowledge.

Kyla is currently producing art works from her studio based at the North Coast and her carefully selected, wall mounted displays continue to intrigue.

Artist Statement

My artefacts are fashioned in clay. The tactile process of modelling a soft, earth-sourced material and transforming it with heat into a vitrified ceramic body recounts the physical construction. The impetus behind it is a mental scuffle with ideologies and theories of human origin. From the dawn of opposable thumbs Homo sapiens have been leaving their mark on history. Bone engravings, rudimentary tools and monoliths have been a source of inspiration, every modest incision linked to a greater story.

Additional materials are integrated including paper, stone and shell. Hand-written scripts are rolled tight, wrapped in concentric spirals that form a protective shell. Living beside the Mesolithic site at Mount Sandel, I have retrieved segments of flint debitage from the floor of the Bann and Lough Foyle when the tide is out. These feature in my arrangements exuding echoes from the past.

Forty thousand years ago, cave artists were using iron oxide, manganese dioxide and charcoal as pigments. As a ceramicist in the 21st century, the same pigments are being used in my own work today! Organised in groups and sealed behind glass, these mixed-media curations allude to allegory.