Description

Denise Porter-Howland Yellow Banana, 2023. White midfire (Clayworks) clay with midfire (Mayco) glaze and enamel hand detailing. One of a limited edition of 14. Each piece is a hand-made artwork, so there may be minor differences from the piece pictured.

Yellow Banana is part of a series created for SCAPE Season 2023. SCAPE Public Art is fundraising to produce the full-scale work as a legacy piece to be permanently installed in Christchurch. Your purchase of this limited edition original will assist with this project.

Denise Porter-Howland is a ceramic artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau. She works full-time from her Grey Lynn studio. After studying fine arts in London and Auckland, Denise’s practice shifted and progressed naturally from painting to ceramics as the focus became more about bringing pieces to life three dimensionally.

Through sculpture, Denise explores the relevance and beauty of abandoned and discarded objects. Banana skins, apple cores and fried eggs sit amongst a collection of rejected curiosities and are given a new platform where they are reimagined as shining pristine objects of art. The colours chosen saturate the forms with intense brightness and the high gloss means each ceramic is finished with a cartoonish and otherwordly perfection. Every ceramic tells a story of movement, self-adjustment, and the resilience of our human existence. The intention is to encourage conversation and to bring transformative value to an occupied space.