A Review by David Jones - Ex tutor

The progress in Rodgers' work has gradually shown a shift away from
verisimilitude; she is no longer merely creating a copy of an animal, but
making pieces whose currency is analogies and correspondences. She is an
artist who aspires to capture the very simplest, yet deepest, of qualities.
Sheworks mainly on a domestic scale, often with domestic themes, yet in
her work there is a power and tension, in the poses, that makes the work
transcend the mundane and enables her to recreate the essence of the
animal that she is studying. She says: "I aim to capture the moment. To
achieve this I do a large amount of visual research including film,
photography and drawing. Sketching is particularly important as it provides
me with a greater understanding of the form. The translation of drawn marks
provides ideas that could not flow from photographs alone."
In addition to her work ensnaring these fleeting moments in life her process
also references her actual means of documentation; via sketching she is able
to introduce qualities into the work that move it far away from pure
representation. The work develops as a dialogue between drawing and
expression in clay, in a search for correspondences; a jagged line in ink is
re-interpreted as torn clay, an arc of soft pencil becomes a rolled clay edge.
The energy of the animal and the tautness of the pose is conveyed by an
analogous distortion in the medium - "Stretching the clay", often to the point
at which it splits and breaks. This forms an essential part of an investigation
into 'statement by omission' - that is through leaving out features of the
animals and focusing attention "on the negative spaces within the form" she
discovered that she was better able to describe it, and suggest the spirit that
animates it. The hollowness of the pieces and the ways in which one can see
through the walls makes the trapped volume a significant aspect of the work.
It can act symbolically, like the empty inside space of a vessel, as a
metaphoric container for our thoughts.
Her subject matter is various and the choice is mainly the result of personal
experience. Thus she deals with a world with which we are familiar - of pet
cats and rabbits - yet she captures the feeling of an ancestral feline whose
savagery is only temporarily tamed, or wild rabbits and hares successfully
colonising the land, ancient symbols of fecundity. There is a harshness in
her treatment of surface that implies a wild, free spirit forcing its way out
of the straitjacket of the 'civilised' world.
As well as beasts in the field and in a domestic environment she has
observed and commented on the human condition. This figurative work
considers the human animal in its own, culturally determining, environment;
the ways in which women are viewed by their peers is conditioned by
contemporary media and the art from the past. The attrition of time on
human bodies and egos is reinterpreted in the terms other own techniques
of ripping and tearing the clay, and the work is finally resolved by leaving
parts incomplete.
"Observing women in changing rooms, I found it amusing how we pose,
preen, squash and squeeze ourselves, whilst looking in the mirror... .
Whilst building a piece, I stretched and tore the clay, giving stronger
definition to the piece. I accidentally tore off too much clay on one of the
breasts, but when viewed from various angles it still had the illusion of form.
I decided to develop this idea and incorporate it more in my work... .. and
at the British Museum I found myself drawn more to the heavily decayed
pieces, as I felt they were very strong and did not need the missing
elements."
The most recent work is starting to incorporate a critique of the relationship
between man and animals. It, also, is about the experience of being a
watcher. The zoo is the most exposed, and one of the least private
environments, for animals. It works as an analogy for the artist who feeds
off of the predatory observation of her subjects. The keeping of primates as
pets, trapped in a zoo or working the seaside resorts as a gimmick is shown
to be ridiculous. There is a heightened sense of the exploitation and
oppression of animals by using found materials in the work. These
ambiguously suggest both parts of the body and also the infiltration of the
free animal spirit by human intrusion. This alienation of the animal world is
further investigated by placing them in a referential ceramic context:
"I wanted the monkeys to work as a pair, reminiscent of Staffordshire
dogs on a mantelpiece. The roller-skates, like the clothes they wear, are
superficial apart from the function of performing for our pleasure.....
The next influence on my work was a toy dog with a spring stomach. I felt
that introducing the spring into my monkeys would not only make them
more like toys, but it also resembled a rib cage". The work is built from a
variety of white clays and porcelain. It grows by accumulation of clay
modules - a hybrid of patties and brandy-snaps. The work is bisque fired
and then painted in a style based on Japanese ink painting techniques.
She applies a watery underglaze using large soft brushes, and, in order to
introduce her own drawn marks, derived from sketching, into the pieces, she
monoprints black earthenware glaze in specific areas to represent the lines
in her actual drawings. The work is refired to 1100°C., this makes them hard
enough to survive; yet is still sufficiently porous to absorb carbon from the
smoke firing. In order to suggest light falling across the camouflage fur of
her subjects Emma uses smudges of colour. These are derived from
materials that give only slight staining from carbon; she burns a little
sawdust mixed with magazine pages around the work; sawdust provides
the soft greys and the magazines give hints of blue.