Sigrid Espelien (b. 1984) is a process artist working with clay and ceramics. She is currently a PhD fellow in artistic research at the Art and Craft department at Oslo National Academy of Art. Espelien studied at the Glass and Ceramics School at Bornholm and received a MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, USA. In the artistic research project “Grounding with (blue)clay” she explores connecting clay as more than a material for art production, but also as soil, landscape, earth, and land. She does this by reading clay through the body, the site and through technology.

A Conversation between Blue clay and

Kaolin 2022
Printed matter with text and photo

The blueclay in Norway is a glacial clay that was formed through mechanical vitrification during the cold ice age, 10-25000 years ago. The kaolin clay, on the other hand, was formed through chemical vitrification 200-145 million years ago, during the Jura period in atropical climate.

For Fieldstation 2022 I have been working with a lump of kaolin from the Ivö Island and a lump of blue clay from Oslo. We visited the island outside of Bromölla in 2021, and I was fascinated by the landscape and the geological phenomenon of how kaolin is formed. We didn’t have a permit to bring any sample of kaolin that time, but I was lucky to bring home to Norway a lump that the curator group SLAM had gotten permission to excavate in their previous residency. This kaolin lump has then been sitting in my studio for a year, surrounded by lumps of blueclay ,and eventually they started speaking together. In Norwegian and Swedish.During the residency I have been developing the idea further of what itwould sound like if they could have aconversation about background, age,class, nature, and humans.

Photos by Tina Stridfeldt

Films by Filip Tell