It’s still a cup, it’s just different now.

Sharisse Eberlein, 2023

Found ceramic cups remodelled with new clay, re-fried and reglazed, wool.

Chia mat by Fahsai Chainarong

Artist’s Statement

My practice explores contemporary ideas around grief and loss, trying to understand ways in which we can move through the experience with gentleness and self-compassion. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, open to where the work leads, my practice evolves and changes along with the changing experience of navigating my own reality of grief in a society that so often doesn’t understand. Underpinning this, is the idea of coming to terms with impermanence, and presence within absence.

Some things cannot be fixed, they can only be carried. Exploring ideas around grief and loss, the broken cup is used as a way to understand how we can move through the experience with gentleness and self-compassion. This work is about learning to pick up the pieces and rebuild. Its not the same, many pieces are gone, they can only be replaced with something new, something you didn’t want or ask for.

It’s still a cup, it still functions, it can still be beautiful. It will just never be the same as what it was before.

Work presented as part of the group exhibition, Impermanent.

Impermanent (Group Exhibtion)

The Engine Room, Massey University, 2023

Fahsai Chainarong, Sharisse Eberlein, Oliver Parrant, Helen Pinson, Dawn Wilce

Temporary / transient / ephemeral / passing / fleeting / momentary

Nothing lasts forever. Each of the artists here are exploring ways to express the constant state of flux in which we find ourselves. Whether adjusting to the loss of a loved one, coming to terms with the unpredictable, or coping with enforced change, the works in this exhibition reflect the impermanent nature of life and the opportunities for growth that it provides.