Candice Lau

2017 QEST Leathersellers' Company Scholar - Leatherwork & Ceramics
London

Candice became a leather craftswoman in 2012 after a career in design, and QEST funding supported further training at the prestigious Scuola del Cuoio in Florence, Italy.

Having mastered leatherwork in the past decade, Candice’s sculptures are born out of bringing clay into her practice. Challenged to change the expectations of what we can and should create out of leather, this impetus has led her to amalgamating leather and clay in the most unexpected ways. She is intrigued by the contradictions of these materials in its form and the process of working with them. With leather, every step must be planned, controlled, and measured. While clay is malleable and unpredictable. Constantly teetering between the element of control and the unknown, the excitement and fear comes when these two contrasting materials are effortlessly entangled.

The aesthetics of her work is conceived out of the process of weaving and pulling clay as if it was leather, and treating leather as if it was a material with fluid characteristics. Clay will embrace leather and leather will lead clay to find a new shape and identity. The outcome of this performative act is something unexpected, alien-like and collapses what we know as beauty.

I am just scratching the surface of working with this incredible material and I am now on the journey to really explore its many possibilities.

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