Melloney Harvey (b. Somerset 1994) uses traditional methods of plastering as a method of making. Whether gypsum fibrous castings, clay modelling, scagliola (false marble) or hand modelled lime works, the pieces combine architecture, craft and sculpture. Plaster has been used by human hand for thousands of years whether functionally or to decorate in a way to create power and importance. The material can be seen as a skin, or a façade to encase a building. At the same time plaster can be used to hide a multitude of sins. Harvey’s work takes interest in the way humans often choose to reproduce parts of history to suit our own narratives, create our own myths, pasts and stories. Fragments of past glories, looking back with a rose-tinted twist.

Architecture has been used throughout time to signify power, the work takes much inspiration from early English architecture, when religious architecture was at the forefront of design and some of the most exquisite buildings still existing today were built by the best craftspeople of the time. Creating buildings with their own personal twists and being given the creative freedom to insert grotesques hiding in the ceilings; gormless, sinister and comical. Harvey enjoys this humanising of architecture, in her own practice creating her own “eavesdroppers” clawing their way out of her work and into the present day or sitting with their tongues hanging greedily, watching and waiting. The past truths are creeping in ready to haunt the present.