Shaun Hayes: 'Pressure'

Pressure is everywhere. It’s in the weight of history, in the social expectations that shape our choices, in the geological forces that formed the very clay we use to create. It’s physical, psychological, and deeply embedded in the human experience.

For Shaun Hayes, pressure isn’t just an idea – it’s both the subject and the process of his work. His ceramics take things we usually throw away and turn them into something solid, something permanent. And in doing so, he makes us look twice at what we value and what we leave behind.

At the heart of this installation is a series of compressed ceramic cubes, each one cast from discarded plastic objects – bottles, takeaway containers, the kind of stuff we barely register before tossing. But under pressure, these objects become something else. No longer flimsy, no longer temporary, they take on weight and significance. By stacking these cubes like pedestals, Hayes plays with ideas of value and worth, asking why we see some things as important and others as disposable. Highlighting the irony: The plastic we discard so easily actually lasts forever in the environment.

‘Pressure not only relates to the physical action in the creation of a ceramic piece or how geological forces formed the material itself, but it also speaks to the emotional, psychological, and societal pressures that shape our daily lives. The process of making ceramics, from moulding the clay to the heat of the kiln, is driven by pressure. This theme runs through both the materials used and the ideas explored in this exhibition.’ – Shaun Hayes

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