No Small Matter

No Small Matter begins with a simple proposition: there is no such thing as small matter.

The installation consists of 27 ceramic forms suspended from a wall-mounted bracket system in a deliberate cubic arrangement. Its ordered, almost rigid structure contrasts with the irregularity of the crystalline surfaces. What appears contained and discrete is connected to larger geological, ecological, technological, and cosmological processes.

The forms are made from imported SIO-2 Upsala porcelain, a highly plastic blue clay, and finished with a commercial Mayco crystalline glaze. During firing, the glaze developed yellow and white crystalline blooms resembling lichen spreading across stone. This resemblance draws attention to lichens themselves, which emerge through symbiotic relationships between different organisms, complicating the idea of an independent or self-contained form.

The work takes its title from Karen Barad’s essay “No Small Matter: Mushroom Clouds, Ecologies of Nothingness, and Strange Topologies of SpaceTimeMattering” (2017). Barad questions the distinction between the very small and the very large, asking how we can maintain that separation when the splitting of an atom can destroy cities and reshape geopolitical futures. Her thinking informs the work’s central proposition: scale is not fixed, but emerges through relationships.

Within this framework, cobalt is not simply a material applied to a ceramic surface. It is shaped by intersecting processes of mining, refinement, industrial demand, glaze chemistry, kiln atmospheres, and technological infrastructure. The ceramic object becomes a temporary stabilisation of these processes. What appears small or contained is already implicated in something much larger.