In originate / replicate, Amy Duval creates a blueprint for a fictional world informed by the boneyard at Medalta in Medicine Hat’s Historic Clay District. On this site, obsolete factory equipment is stored outdoors in stacks of varying states of rust and decay. Here machinery and plant life merge to create new visual interpretations of life, death, and memories of future plans.

Using the industrial ceramic production method of slip casting, Duval creates large volumes of repeated forms that can be spliced and reassembled into new structures. Slip cast components are combined with wheel thrown and hand-built elements and then mounted on the wall as a form of 3-dimensional abstract painting. Duval’s sculpture is suggestive of machinery, plant life and architecture. The mechanically influenced, ambiguous shapes are filled with the potential for endless replication and reinvention.

The mechanical diagram is a systematic approach to understanding. It visually pulls apart complex systems to study individual components in relation to the whole. For this exhibition, Duval has created a metaphorical diagram that blurs the boundaries between the mechanic and organic, the planned and spontaneous and the past and present.

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Born and raised in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Amy Duval received her BFA from Kwantlen Polytechnic University in 2017 where she focused on ceramic sculpture and installation based work. Merging slip casted and wheel thrown forms, Amy creates site specific installations that explore her interests in drawing and painting in combination with the metaphorical potential of ceramic sculpture. After graduating, she spent two years as a Ceramic Artist in Residence at Harbourfront Centre Toronto. In 2019 she moved to Medicine Hat to work as the Ceramic Studio Technician at the Shaw Centre for Contemporary Ceramics at Medalta in the Historic Clay District and in 2021 she took on the role of Residency Coordinator. In her personal studio at Medalta she is creating a new body of work that involves integrating a contemporary ceramic response to the history of Medalta Potteries with the recurring themes in her practice.

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