Oxfordshire-born Rachel Kneebone graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Sculpture and is represented by White Cube.
The body is ever-present in Kneebone's work, although it frequently appears fragmented, abstracted or collapsed. In this sculpture, a series of 15, six small pod-like shapes, each one slightly different, sit in a standard cardboard egg box: ripe, natural forms in porcelain.
One pod is split open at the top to reveal further detail and a sense of activity inside. With its sharply contrasting textures of shiny porcelain and rough, uncoloured cardboard the work evokes the Surrealist gesture as well the notion of the 'informe', championed in the writings of Georges Bataille.
In a similar manner to Kneebone's major sculptural installations, this sculpture manages to blur the boundaries between the conscious and the subconscious and the real and the imagined, in one delicate work.