Hannah McInally

The Empty Vessel

The Empty Vessel series, a collection of representational vessels, visualises and embodies the way grief takes from the individual and how we build around the space left behind. Clean white architectural forms become projected aspects of self, deemed appropriate for outside consumption. Inside an absence is present. The absence is the embodiment of grief, carried internally, its weight becomes perceptible in the physicality of the vessels. These corporeal forms become the embodiment of self creation in the face of the void. As empty vessels we traverse the spaces we occupy as representations of formed bodies. The ceramic forms relate to one another, standing alone but remaining interconnected in their expressions, just as grief isolates the individual whilst injecting them into a fundamental shared aspect of the human experience.

The Presence of Absence

The Presence of Absence collection continues on from The Empty Vessel series. Following the journey of moving past grief and the absence left within. These vessels have complementary forms that slot together, completing the exterior and creating a whole form. Striving to create a perfect aesthetic resolve, painting a mirage of a formed and complete psyche. The absence that grief maintains as a presence in our psyche, extends outwards and has not only emotional implications but also material and social ones. The void reshapes and redefines our reality. As individual pieces each still occupy the role of The Empty Vessel but when put together they contain the absence within, allowing their external qualities to find a full form. The addition of the blue tubular appendages reference the unaffected personality, the raw emotional state of the individual. They hold close in embrace the exterior of the white slab vessels. They act in support of the affected form, adding a further dimensionality to the perceived complete object.

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As part of the developmental stage a series of experiments were carried out to explore the creation of content through emotional engagement, intending the designs to be emergent not prescriptive. Material and visual experiments were utilised to push the themes of physicality throughout the work further. They maintained a degree of form to continue the idea of a present absence. A high degree of abstraction was involved in the design, to retain some ambiguity and a vague suggestion of the ideas. This allows the viewer to shape their own emotional response to the pieces more freely without outside dictation.

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