Secret Garden II

Pinched and pressed, twisted and towering, Lynda Draper’s whimsical ceramics give form to her exploration of dreams, memory and metaphysics. From imposing coiled structures to anthropomorphic vessels, her carefully hand-built sculptures push the technical and aesthetic limits of the medium. Draper offers glimpses into realms that exist somewhere between fantasy and reality to explore connections between the human mind and material culture – whether through talismans, architectural spaces, or domestic objects.

Secret Garden II is part of Draper’s Talismans for Unsettled Times series. When first exhibited together, she described the gathering of ceramics as a votive offering – an honouring of space that is sacred, tethered to human and non-human forces. Arranged as a constellation, rather than according to traditional museological principles, they open a channel for knowledge that transcends ordinary comprehension.

From these sculptures’ coiling armatures, familiar motifs of plants and faces emerge. Yet they remain subtle and ambiguous enough to transform with each viewer’s imagination. Is that a crown? A person’s hair? An ornate trinket? In Secret Garden II, an assortment of detailed, miniature trees appear to have sprouted atop a mass of twisting pink loops. But as you move around the work, the perspective shifts. Its undulating shapes could also read as human limbs, an eye, or a mouth. Mysterious forces seem at play. Here, nothing is fixed, all remains fluid, and Draper invites us to dream and commune beyond the corporeal.