Artist Highlight - Sophie Ambelas

The amphora is one of those forms that never quite disappears. It belongs very clearly to the ancient world, yet it continues to return in different ways through design, craft, architecture, and decoration. In The Amphora Era, Sophie Ambelas takes this familiar historical form and pushes it into a more unstable, contemporary space. At first, the reference is easy to recognise. The works borrow from the shape and presence of ancient Greek vessels, objects once associated with storage, trade, ritual, and domestic life. But Ambelas is not simply remaking an amphora, nor is she treating it as a nostalgic symbol of the past. What makes the work interesting is the way she allows the form to become unsettled. The vessels are built from stretched coils of clay, and this process is central to how the pieces are read. The coils expose something usually kept hidden within ceramic construction. They show pressure, layering, support, and weakness at the same time. Some parts appear tightly held together, while others pull apart or lean into the risk of collapse. The structure feels deliberate, but not over-controlled. That tension gives the work a physical and emotional charge. Looking at these pieces, I do not think only of archaeology or classical design. I think about bodies, and about how people carry pressure. The stretched clay suggests a surface that has been tested. It reveals stress rather than concealing it, and this is where the work begins to feel more human. Ambelas’s Greek heritage is clearly present, but the work does not become overly reverent. Greek culture appears here as an active source rather than a fixed identity. The amphora is used as a point of departure, not as something to be preserved exactly. This is important, because the work is at its strongest when it lets history move rather than placing it behind glass. The use of spray paint also helps pull the vessels away from a purely historical reading. The colours feel sharp, contemporary, and at times deliberately artificial. They interrupt the expectation of ceramic as earthy, muted, or archaeological. In doing so, Ambelas creates a useful friction between ancient form and present-day visual culture. I am particularly interested in the way the pieces handle risk. The stretched coils often look as if they have reached the edge of what the material can hold. There are dips, twists, openings, and moments where gravity seems to have been allowed to leave its mark. Rather than correcting every irregularity, Ambelas keeps these moments visible. This decision gives the work much of its strength. The vessels do not appear fragile because they are badly made. They appear fragile because the process is honest about the limits of the material. There is skill here, but there is also a willingness to let the clay behave on its own terms. That balance between control and surrender makes the objects feel alive. The amphora traditionally carries something: wine, oil, grain, water, goods moving from one place to another. Ambelas’s vessels no longer seem to function in that practical sense. Instead, they carry memory, identity, and a kind of inherited pressure. They feel like containers for cultural experience rather than physical contents. This shift changes how the viewer relates to them. They are not simply decorative vessels, and they are not only sculptural references to antiquity. They sit somewhere between object, body, and image. The addition of leather strengthens this reading. It brings in associations with clothing, protection, skin, and adornment. The contrast between ceramic and leather creates a relationship between hardness and softness, exposure and defence. There is also a subtle humour in the titles Gen Z Amphora and Millennial Amphora. These titles could sound casual, but they work because they make the ancient form feel unexpectedly current. They point to the way each generation inherits cultural structures while trying to reshape them through its own language, colours, and anxieties. The titles also prevent the work from becoming too solemn. They allow the pieces to sit between classical reference and contemporary identity without forcing either side to dominate. Ambelas seems aware that tradition can become heavy if treated too seriously. Here, she gives it room to shift, misbehave, and become visually strange again. I think the strongest part of The Amphora Era is how it takes a form many people think they already know and makes it feel unsettled again. The amphora becomes less like an artefact and more like a living structure under pressure. It reminds us that tradition does not remain relevant simply because it is old. It remains relevant when artists are willing to test it, distort it, and let it speak differently. What stays with me is not the historical reference alone, but the sense of transformation. Ambelas shows that the past is not separate from contemporary life. It is carried through material, family, culture, memory, and the body. These vessels make that inheritance visible, not as something fixed, but as something still being stretched into shape.