Soft Quarry (Column Party!) engages with a classical architectural element that has been endlessly revived to become a nostalgic symbol of empire, power, capital and culture. Using clay extracted from the Taatisten lake, these columns undermine the grandiosity of the archetype, through abjection and playfulness; they lean, bend and sometimes slump under their own weight and often appear rough or unfinished. Their organic nature is referenced in their wobbly or uneven striations, like the bark of the trees that inspired the earliest stone columns, and the vegetation and minerals that occasionally show through the surface of the clay. Each has been constructed with a traditional handbuilding method – slab, pinch, coil, carve, model – and many were added to daily, becoming markers of time spent at the residency. The sculptures are unfired, resisting the permanence of a traditional column, and will be returned to the lake at the end of the exhibition.