Selected by Paul Carey-Kent

Paul writes: ‘In Between the Lines’ III, IV and V are each comprised of four elements. Alison Rees describes herself as using ‘porcelain, thinly rolled, to create a strong, yet fragile looking, minimal form’.  You might call them ceramic paintings. Rees also thinks of books: they ‘draw upon the language of the paper page – its repeatable dimensions, thinness, use of borders and grid layout – to tell abstract stories in clay.  The stories I tell are of person and of place, of the ordinary and the everyday, and of nimbleness and agility within a sometimes weighty world… I am interested in abstracting information from my environment and, through colour, repetition and variation, making something new from it… Through this deliberate reduction in volume and process, a minimal three-dimensional object emerges which contains layers of meaning without material weight.’

We can see these, then, as buildings reduced to their geometric essence, nodding to hard-edged minimal painting while using pleasing colours and the appeal of ceramic to foreground pleasure over severity. Then there’s the echo of alphabets and Pacman. And that’s all before we get to their actual basis: water drainage grills!