Fetish I, Fetish II, Fetish III, Fetish IV
Collection:UAL Art Collection
Date: 2025
Artist: Alex Morante (American)
Dimensions:
Fetish I:10 x 4 x 2.5cm
Fetish II: 9 x 4 x 5cm
Fetish III: 10 x 4 x 2.5cm
Fetish IV: 10 x 4 x 2.5cm
Medium: Glazed stoneware
Object number: UAC 1181
DescriptionAlex studied BA Ceramic Design at Central Saint Martins. Her artist's statement says that she is 'a multidisciplinary artist whose figurative practice is a mode of self-inquiry and introspection, a process reflected through explorations of material and form. Rooted in a morbid curiosity, her work draws from the dark symbolic imagery found in mythology, folklore, and religious iconography - forming personal narratives that evoke deterioration, transformation, and the subconscious.
Channelling the personal experience of a recent diagnosis through this fascination shaped her graduate series which consists of ceramic sculptures in the form of distorted creatures. These beings are dredged from psychological recesses, embodying uneasy dualities: growth and decay, empathy and fear, the familiar and the unknown.
She explored these themes by mimicking surfaces that evoke deterioration (rust, ancient bronze patinas, lichen, and mould) while also referencing the aesthetic traditions of the Grotesque and Memento Mori, using recurring motifs such as skeletons, worms, and beasts as symbolic guides through this terrain'.
Channelling the personal experience of a recent diagnosis through this fascination shaped her graduate series which consists of ceramic sculptures in the form of distorted creatures. These beings are dredged from psychological recesses, embodying uneasy dualities: growth and decay, empathy and fear, the familiar and the unknown.
She explored these themes by mimicking surfaces that evoke deterioration (rust, ancient bronze patinas, lichen, and mould) while also referencing the aesthetic traditions of the Grotesque and Memento Mori, using recurring motifs such as skeletons, worms, and beasts as symbolic guides through this terrain'.