About
I'm an Irish artist and designer based on the Spanish island of Mallorca. My practice is founded in a lifelong engagement with materials, making, and what objects can hold. After two decades in design, I've returned to my fine art roots through ceramics.
I make ceramic figures that sit between the familiar and the fantastical. They emerge through intuition, memory and feeling rather than direct reference. I am interested in giving difficult or hard-to-name emotions a physical form. Creatures that feel half recognised. Not invented so much as uncovered through the process of making.
Alongside this, I develop Trace, a long-term research practice that works with native plants to embed the memory of place into ceramic glazes, tracing a geographic arc from Japan through Ireland to Western Australia.
Things that shape my practice
A fascination with what shapes us
I am deeply interested in the things that form us. Culture, environment, memory, symbolism and inherited behaviours. The stories we absorb without realising. I’m drawn to the tension between the visible and invisible parts of ourselves and how emotion, identity and experience can be carried through objects, materials and form.
Material as collaborator
I’m interested in materials that speak back. Clay, ash, fire, minerals, native botanicals, surfaces shaped by time and process. I don’t see making as imposing an idea onto a material but entering into a conversation with it. Some of the most meaningful outcomes arrive unexpectedly through experimentation, accident and attention.
Making as a way of thinking
I’ve always made things. I spent two decades working across model making, product and digital design, and creative strategy with cultural organisations, educators, makers and ethical businesses. That experience continues to shape how I approach my practice today. Research, structure, documentation and storytelling remain central to how I work. Making has never been separate from thinking. It’s how I understand the world.
Say hi, connect with me! I’m really easy to find. I’m orlalarkin everywhere. I’m even on TikTok although you won’t find me dancing.