Luke Hamel Cooke

Luke Hamel Cooke is a sculptor and ceramicist currently working and teaching in London. He uses experimental techniques to emulate fertility, abundance and physis — the principle of growth or change in nature. Although the work refers to organic geometry, it is fundamentally abstract and fictional in its design. Although he loves the ceramic process, he is currently in the process of having some of his work rendered in bronze at Arch bronze foundry in Putney and in the new year he is embarking on a short stone carving course.

A year ago, he was walking through some woods near his parents’ house where he was born in north Oxfordshire looking for clay near a small stream, the stream yielded nothing, however nearby a large tree had fallen and the roots of the tree had pulled a band of bluish grey clay above the topsoil.

After a trip to the natural history museum in Oxford he discovered that it was Oxford clay, which is a highly fossiliferous clay formed in the mid-late Jurassic period around 158 million years ago when the area was a shallow sea. Oxford clay from this area has yielded some of the UK’s most significant Jurassic fossils including a 15-meter-long plesiosaur from a nearby quarry as well as quite a few Jurassic crocodiles and ammonites.