Hélène Jous

Based in Toulouse, Hélène Jous has developed a distinctive approach to clay and its transformations since the 1990s. Her hand-built sculptures, often built with double walls, combine porcelain, stoneware and volcanic sands and stones. Material and form emerge together, creating richly textured surfaces whose subtle colours and variations are revealed through firing, particularly in wood-fired anagama kilns. Her work explores the union of opposites, between roughness and delicacy, smooth and textured surfaces, strength and fragility. Awarded the Bernard Palissy Prize in 2009, her work is also represented in the collections of the Musée Bernard Palissy in France.