We've Found the Body of Your Child

'I was looking, too, at a number of Brueghel paintings, including the Hunters in the Snow, whose composition provided the inspiration for this pot. I wanted ambiguity, so there’s a woman with the dead body of her child in front of her, surrounded by figures, some of whom look like soldiers. Is she being arrested, or is she being comforted? I also had in mind the Tom Waits song ‘Georgia Lee’, a ballad sung by a father for his child who is found dead in the woods.

The phrases on the pot are things that many parents find themselves saying: ‘Never did me any harm’ or ‘Never have kids’, which my own mother used to say a lot. These phrases are the thin end of the wedge of child abuse: they’re about the way we don’t take children seriously or treat them as equals.

This has become one of my better-known works but it was odd, because most people didn’t actually look at it.'