Rachael Baum

My practice is concerned with contradictions between ceramic history and contemporary narratives. It is rooted in techniques of production, particularly mould-making, casting, and repetition. I work primarily with slipcast porcelain, often using mass-produced plastic objects as source material. This process allows me to explore how value is constructed and assigned — how certain materials are treated as precious, durable, or culturally significant, while others are considered disposable, invisible, or temporary.

I am interested in juxtapositions such as the handmade and the industrial, the natural and the synthetic, and consumption and waste. My work often draws on films, cultural tropes, and everyday visual language, picking up on small details with a sense of curiosity and play. Familiar forms and components are distorted and recontextualised through iteration and, at times, interactivity. I am particularly interested in the legacy of small things — modest, overlooked objects and gestures that quietly shape daily life.

Concerns around sustainability and the long-term consequences of human activity underpin much of my practice and frequently emerge through projects such as Future Fossils.

The Future Fossils project consists of three distinct pieces as follows:-

In the present
Porcelain casts are trapped within delicate layers of the same material. One must be discarded to reach the other. The title signifies the short term thinking that characterises consumerism as well as the desire to acquire the prize within.

DIG SITE / FILL SITE
A curious imagined future, where those who dig are more likely to find discarded plastic dinosaur toys than real dinosaur bones. What makes the distinction between trash and treasure? Participants are invited to choose. Are these precious artefacts to be dug up or merely rubbish to be buried? What will be the legacy of the human age?

The legacy of small things
Porcelain casts of cheap and disposable objects form heaps reminiscent of both dump sites and burial mounds. The compositions abound with vanitas symbolism, referencing the short existence of humans, compared with the long life of largely plastic discards that we continue to accumulate.