This piece is a part of Jam Westwood’s Seven Sisters (II) collection. A series of seven amphora vases decorated with illustrations that draw from European folklore and Greek mythology to explore the contemporary political landscape and today’s female condition.

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Like the men before him, he had gently whispered his unhappiness, but she did not hear a sound. He tried again and again, but never once did an acknowledgement come his way. He raised his voice and tried it on differently, yet her brows offered not a single twitch. So he walked and he walked until he reached the top of the highest peak around. There, he practised his voice, making it louder than it had ever been. He stood atop the summit of this mountain of no equivalence and yelled everything that had built up inside him towards her. It echoed down the valleys and bounced from rock to rock until it reached her. But what the sisters heard they dismissed as only the whining of livestock, and so they carried on their business as before. Over the months and years that followed, he silently carved his sorrows on the mountainside. His art became a vast temple of woe, visible to all in the villages, across the towns and right out to the sisters at sea, but all they noticed was decoration. Wearily, he dropped his head in defeat, noticing a body that no longer resembled his own—strengthened by years of hard labour yet wrapped in threadbare rags. He ripped them off at once…

Then her eyebrows twitched…

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Glazed stoneware, slip and sgraffito decoration.

2026