My own Photos from Christies public exhibition – Lucie Rie and Jennifer Lee – raw glazing and adding oxides/materials to clay bodies
What are the chances I found two of my favorite ceramicists in the same place, very, almost overly, tasteful curation at Christies, the de Waal tipped it over the edge. Both Rie and Lee subvert the organic aesthetic – tampering with echos of stone patinas and stratigraphic seams.
At a glance you might think Rie’s pots are quite inorganic, but it is a misunderstanding of the organic that leads one to this belief. Some might think pepto bismol but I see Coraline Algae and Pyrite, the fantastical side of nature, that isn’t green and brown or neutral. I am not suggesting that this is what inspired Rie, simply that that’s what her work inspires in me.
PyriteCoraline Algae
could my practice review be a commentary on the culture and style of curation within the British and English museum setting…? were obsessed with the Parthenon Frieze and the Benin Bronzes (in fact the British Museum said they’d ‘loan the bronzes back to Nigeria’ at one point). meanwhile much of Britains native archaeology is sat underground in a multitiude of stores across the country.
amendment – https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmbills/037/10037.i-i.html – allows trustees and Secretary of State to transfer objects
My practice is centred around the changing status of material, the intangible ties they have to their places of origin and to ourselves. In the past I have focused on the status of material that we create for ourselves, especially in our ceramic world, and how it becomes easier and easier to lose track of this finite, earth bounty.
If only materials like copper carbonate, vanadium, cobalt, and even clay, looked as harmful, toxic, corrosive, as they can be. Whilst creating my collection ‘The Poisoned Chalice’, I challenged myself to create chalices that appeared as pernicious as they were, rendered so by the inclusion of Vanadium Pentoxide in the clay body.
Marcus coates terraforming dolomite – quarries around henges are magnesian limestone The Blue Lake at Fairbourne in Wales looks like the sort of place Nimue would have offered Arthur Excalibur, rising up from the depths in her hand. we like manicured landscapes
Akiyama Yo, part of the movement, worked with his father in a traditional Kyoto pottery but also sought to rebel against the strict rules and regulations of the ‘salon’. For example the movement showed pottery and sculpture in the same exhibition, something that was frowned upon by traditional Japanese potters. They also refused to submit their work to a salon, or copy traditional designs.
“AKIYAMA YO’S art stands in stark contrast to the utilitarian nature of traditional ceramics. His sculptures are rather a manifestation of the very essence of clay. Harkening back to its geologic origin, his oeuvre reflects the igneous nature of clay–– formed during its swift cooling from volcanic magma. Akiyama’s aesthetic perspective is that art is in a constant state of transformation, like the surface of the earth. Through his act of creation, he feels the energy trapped within the clay body is released.” – https://blogs.massart.edu/earthandalchemy/artists/yo-akiyama-japanese/ South Hall Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston. Related to the Earth & Alchemy Exhibition
In 1948, the Sodeisha artists mailed out postcards with their ‘motto’ or artistic credo:
“The postwar art world needed the expediency of creating associations in order to escape from personal confusion, but today, finally, that provisional role appears to have ended. The birds of dawn taking flight out of the forest of falsehood now discover their reflections only in the spring of truth. We are united not to provide a ‘warm bed of dreams’, but to come to terms with our existence in broad daylight”
Vase – Yamada Hikarutop view.
Wedgewood
Josiah Wedgewood, and those who worked for him, Experimented with coloured clays, manipulated clay bodies, created jasper ware, revolutionised the status of clay around the time of the industrial revolution, a human trace within ceramic – our power goes beyond just manipulation into shapes and forms, we can also push the boundaries of plasticity, colour texture etc.
Jasper-ware tests from V&A Wedgewood museum
Elers Brothers
Created unglazed red stoneware, made it fashionable, desirable. The original trend-setters, changing the aesthetic sensibilities of a nation and beyond. They found clay in Staffordshire that imitated Yixing ware(purple teapot) apparently their clay was finer, according to a Chinese scholar of the time. They were previously jewellers, from Utrecht, but moved to London in the 1680s and became potters.
Elers Brothers mug and teapot – 1695
The beaker shown here is decorated with stamped Chinese symbols, which I thought at first were hallmarks, like on silver, interesting to think that they were previously jewellers. It would be interesting to possibly work with the idea of ‘signifiers’ like hallmarks, that determine and represent the material status of an object.
Silver Ingot made in Sheffield.
Bibliography –
Cort, Louise Allison (2004). “Crawling Through Mud: Avant-Garde Ceramics in Postwar Japan”. Studio Potter
Kersten Bergendal, Swedish artist recognised as a ‘pioneer of time based participatory intervention’.
The Trekroner Art Plan Project – “Open Plan – An New Commons for Trekonner” , Bergendal asked residents of a new urban area “what would you like to share, or do together? What do you wish to share with each other?”
the artist planned the installation of three towers in steel and acrylic glass, to act as “a central self governed zone between the rational suburban settlements.”
“My work intervenes with the logic of a place. This also means, that the place and its locals, professionals and institutions also intervenes with me and thus with the art project, making it an unpredictable reciprocal and simultaneous ping-pong process. The discursive platform that eventually might grow out of such an exchange, aims at cultivating an existing local agency and improving conditions for joint local action with point of departure in the spectrum of critique on, utopic ideas about and hopes for the site.” Bio from website https://kerstinbergendal.com/
Marcus Coates
Journey to the Lower World 2005 – “an album of words and images reflecting on human and animal consciousness in the contemporary world — how ancient forms of knowledge, healing and spirituality are adapted to fill a void. adapt ancient forms of knowledge, healing and spirituality to fill a void in the contemporary world.” – Mark Wallinger
Coates facilitates a connection, communion, communication. attempting to aid the residents of Liverpool’s Linosa Close, a 24-storey council tower block scheduled for demolition. I’m not entirely sure about Coates’ work, or how and if it effectively ‘helps people’, perhaps he creates an “image of hope” as Wallinger suggests.
School of The Imagination 2013
“Applications were sought from the general public and local community groups to attend a week-long workshop devised and led by Coates in a community centre in Bethnal Green, London. Six participants were selected to attend this one-off course. The group were encouraged to develop the scope and use of their imagination. They trained to create and sustain imagined worlds in which they could immerse themselves. They went on to use these experiences to gather relevant information from their imagination, to help answer questions for themselves and other people, i.e. strangers on the street, local residents and policy advisors at City Hall, London.” Marcus Coates website.
Coates proposed questions like: How can we intervene to help end the war in Syria? What can I do differently to get a job? What stops me from starting my own business? How will the world cope with the ever increasing population? How can I approach this job interview differently? If people know if something is bad for their health, why do they carry on doing it?
I’m interested in. how Coates uses question as a sort of trigger for pre-existing ideas or queries that havens been fulfilled, answered, explored before, what I like about the participatory work that I have chosen to focus on is their involvement of creating a ‘space’ or zone for thought, catharsis.
National Covid Memorial Wall. – brain child of the same campaign leaders who called for an inquiry into the government handling of the pandemic, the memorial wall could be seen as apolitical but that’s without the acknowledgement of radical grieving that it portrays. is it not technically graffiti? and an encouraged confrontation with loss. I mean its on the wall facing parliament…
Wax tablets – reusable writing/drawing tablets, first archaeological evidence found in a 14th century BC shipwreck in modern day Turkey, also used in Ancient Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia and Medieval Europe.
London has its own relationship with wax tablets, The Bloomberg Tablets are a collection of 405 preserved wooden tablets, found at the site of the Bloomberg building in the financial district of London.
this material research inspired the initial stages of my workshop development, however after focusing more on the research/ideas side I’ve realised the wider possibilities of this medium and practice. if I were to continue developing my workshop or the ideas involved; carving into wax instead of plaster and slip casting the relief – the wax would be really interesting to work with and reusable/ recyclable – a better vehicle for the process, malleable in more ways than one.
CYLINDER SEALS –
small round cylinder of stone, usually with a hole pierced through the centre, carved into to depict script and figurative scenes, typically rolled along a piece of wet clay to create an impression of the design – a positive. used as signatures, like a signet, as jewellery and as magical amulets. They are though to have originated in the Late Neolithic Period c.7600-6000 BCE in modern day Syria.
Although I’m using plaster in the workshop, the method and use is very similar – I too hope to create a sort of collection of signatures – visual footprints (or handprints) of one person, through the eyes of another.
SKETCHBOOK AND IMAGES
pressing clay onto plaster slab to make a tile.
plaster bats, cut up from larger slab
fired porcelain tile – imprint from first workshop.
initial trialing and photographs from workshop No 1. and 2
initial design for artwork
workshop plan
first plan for hand carving hand workshop, a little to chaotic..
first prompt/information sheet for 1st workshop 19/01/22
porcelain tiles from workshop No 2.
LINKS TO ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
notes from workshop No. 1 and 2, + time sheet from workshop No. 2:
great video documenting Jennifer lee’s use of oxides in clay bodies, almost tempting them to the surface and in different directions.
https://www.wallpaper.com/architecture/tambacounda-hospital-manuel-herz-senegal – “our entry took the form of a proposal embedded in research and collaboration; not a building, but a suggestion of how to approach the project.’ Herz’ considered thinking won the competition.” Sometimes a way of thinking or design philosophy is better than an existing idea or plan when collaborating with other people or a community. Democracy of design…
https://www.wallpaper.com/design/verner-panton-exhibition-r-and-company-new-york – Verner Panton obscures the lightbulb in one lighting piece to “heighten the experience of form, material and quality of light” – I think the piece is about heightening or expanding the experience of light or being lit, is a lamp or light piece simply a manipulation of light?
in the clinic for example, the patient needs to be comfortable but also well lit to encourage a better diagnosis. A similar dichotomy exists in a dining environment; the diner needs to feel comfortable(if that is the restauranteurs wish) but also be able to see their food… singularly lit tables, or suspended, directed lighting
To what extent did time, economics and politics effect the design process of Theodor Bogler’s Combination Teapot?
I have chosen these three frames to look through because in the world the teapot was designed in, they were inextricably linked.
In 1923, the same year he became business director of the Bauhaus pottery, Theodor Bogler designed the Combination teapot. The Combination Teapot (also called the Modular teapot) is a design for four variations of a teapot, all assembled from the same 6 individual parts. The examples in the V&A are all hand thrown and altered, whereas the design was meant for industrial mass moulding – encompassing the Bauhaus philosophy that objects should be beautiful, well designed but affordable. Bogler designed the teapot during the period when Walter Gropius, the founder and leader of Bauhaus, decided that his students should design for industry. Anna Rowland explains this in her journal article; Business Management at the Weimar Bauhaus;
“Gropius realised that the very survival of the school depended on making contact with the external world (das Werkleben), and in particular, finding industrial manufacturers for the models developed in the workshops. The more money the school could earn through the sale of its workshop products, the less dependent it had to be on funding from the Thuringian government, and therefore upon government policy.”
Theodor Bogler eventually became a preist… after he passed the journeyman’s examination of the Chamber of Crafts Weimar in 1922, he studied philosophy and theology at two abbeys, became a monk and then a preist, while continuing his ceramic practice. I can find no evidence of this, especially since Bogler was known for designing, not making…
I can’t find any fired examples of the first (dare i say more traditional) teapot, only the plaster example. It’s rather more dumpy, what you would expect to be mass produced, not sleek and modernist like the more popular third and fourth option. – hard to achieve this shape from just throwing
“Gropius realised that the very survival of the school depended on making contact with the external world (das Werkleben), and in particular, finding industrial manufacturers for the models developed in the workshops. The more money the school could earn through the sale of its workshop products, the less dependent it had to be on funding from the Thuringian government, and therefore upon government policy.”
“The strains of the Syndikus’s job were enormous, and in Spring 1924 Lange resigned. As he did so, he complained that it was an impossible task to administrate an educational institution as a profit making concern.“
Flatback project – V&A Website –
“In the grim and troubled mid 19th century, the working population of Britain was so hungry for folk heroes that even a small-time (but particularly vicious) 18th-century highwayman like Dick Turpin could be raised in the public imagination to the romantic status of Robin Hood. His figure was often paired with that of Tom King, another highwayman whom Turpin shot and killed by mistake. It is perhaps doubtful whether King would have wished to be immortalised alongside his killer!”
delftware tiles – needs a certain amount of freedom with the brush, decoration – can’t make a ‘mistake’. Paul Bommer – printmaker now tile maker – i like that his practice is so specific – does he consider himself a potter?
could i add medium to ochre, or earthenware? for the plate?
could be nice to do some more majolica tests, feel good about the painterlyness…
post fired ceramic waste… surely it doesn’t all have to be sludgy and grey… how far is small scale sustainable practice relevant to industry, mass production, when these things are intrinsically linked to a commercialist, consumerist model of design and consumption…?
how can my own ceramic practice be sustainable and still look and feel like my own ceramic practice? i mean if it was up to me, i’d be making things almost entirely from clay id gathered myself, and pigments id found along the way… but there are lots of other things i want to explore, far far away from this. Ill try to get some more glaze tests done on saturday and next week…
GREENING…?
I ALSO like the idea of making things that are no longer or were never made out of clay, out of clay… functional objects that are not table ware and lend themselves to the material, so its not just for the sake of making it out of clay. One day i will make those rhubarb forcers for my neighbour…
more on horticulture… why we use clay, porosity, retention of heat, and coolness…also cooking – fridge
“The zeer, a conical pot made of porous clay, keeps water cool through evaporation. A small amount of water will evaporate through the porous terracotta. The energy required to evaporate is drawn from the heat energy within the water, meaning that the water temperature drops.”
It wasn’t just the heating up of food that propelled us into the late neolithic, but the act of keeping it cool, both heavily relied on clay, all over the world. Clay and water are inseparable, in both form and function – especially because fired clay retains water. And raw clay needs water to exist in its malleable state. WORKS BOTH WAYS!
EXHIBITION VISIT…
To Gallery 46 in Whitechapel, to see ‘Queer as Folklore’ – Rites and Wrongs. An Exhibition of ten LGBTQ+ Artists exploring Paganism, Myth and Legend.
archaeology suggests it took 20,000 YEARS for people to start making vessels, instead of sculptures and votive figures…
10,000 BCE – Japan, Jomon Pottery – he term “Jōmon” (縄文) means “rope-patterned” in Japanese, describing the patterns that are pressed into the clay, a culture of basketry existed before they had pottery. Maybe
Vessel pottery is intrinsically linked with sedentism, pottery is not entirely suitable for nomadic life, vessels made from gourds or basketry are. HOWEVER, early Jomon Pottery is of particular interest because it represents a semi-nomadic, ceramic vessel using culture, who were not farmers… Proves why its important to be culturally relative, not everyone in the neolithic was farming…(western frame)
cord patterns on jomon pottery gave rise to a theory of how people discovered the transformative properties of clay when exposed to heat. before Ceramic vessels, people would line baskets with clay to make them watertight. perhaps a basket like this was accidentally left next to a fire, leaving a hard pot behind, with ‘basket patterns’ on the outside
Sterling Silver and Ebony Teapot 1879
Much of Dresser’s ceramic design could be described at well finished copies of ornamental japanese pieces, and ancient near eastern ceramics. He visited japan in the begginings of the technological revolution, infact he became a pioneer of the anglo-japanese style of the time… What i have chosen to focus on is his Silver teapot. When i first saw it i immediately thought bauhaus, of course the bauhaus was heavily influenced by the British Arts and Crafts movement, but come on!
1880
The V&A website: “He grasped both the properties of materials and the processes of production and adapted his designs and aesthetics to them brilliantly.”
I personally would not expect the ‘Father of industrial design’ to design something so brilliantly subversive, his designs in nearly all other materials were heavily influenced by his interest in botany and plant forms, but not the silverware…
idea; the designer must respond to material, dresser’s silverware teapots are so different from the rest of his work…they are undeniably modernist
people are still drinking tea from fine china somewhere, hard culture to break through into – people are stubborn with their crockery…
Walker & Hall, Sheffield, England. 1880Sterling silver and ebony tea set. Walker & Hall, Sheffield, England. 1894Marianne Brandt. Silver and Ebony Tea Infuser and Strainer. 1924
hand built jug made from local Hill top (yorkshire) clay – inspired by Delft shape
handbuilding techniques borrowed from; watching YouTube clips of Maria Martinez, Tibetan black pottery potters, Chinese Yixing clay teapot (purple sand teapot) makers.
majolica on stoneware thrown jug with various illustrations including an eel, a Scots pine and verbeiahand-painted majolica wisteria thrown stoneware jug with hand carved foot ring. large slab built jug with hollow handle and majolica eel decoration.throwing jug formshand carved foot ring
Mugs
Slip cast white earthenware mug with Majolica decorationmajolica over textured blue slip
flatback
Verbeia is a Romano-british deity, thought to be the deification of the river Wharfe, in Wharfedale, Yorkshire. I have chosen to use her as a motif throughout this term because I find her form interesting, the wielding of snakes by goddesses at the time she was carved and indeed much prior was popular in Canaanite, Iranian, Cretan, Maya, Scandanavian, Yoruba and West African art. The carving is representative of a long history of female deities like this.
Slipcast white earthenware flat back tile with raised verbeia relief and Majolica details. bisquedwhite tin majolica glaze over earthenware slip made from local clay and river sediment. I really like how the slip looks on the sides of the tile – will use this technique in the future…pre glaze firing, with earthenware slip and yellow stain (+spangles) decoration on majolica
Carving of verbeia in All Saints Parish Church, Ilkley, West Yorkshire.
Some historians believe Verbeia is a celtic-roman-gaulish realisation of the Gaulish goddess or princess; The Mavilly Goddess, who holds in one hand two snakes and wears a flowing pleated tunic. It is believed by some that the romans recruited from the Lingones tribe in present day Dijon in France, those that believe this also believe that those same troops had something to do with the depiction of Verbeia.
The Mavilly Goddess.bisqued
Its important to remember that the ‘Romans’ were not all true Italians, like the British in the first and second world wars the romans scouted and enslaved people from the middle east, Africa and the rest of modern day Europe or Gaul.
experimenting with carving into clayexperimenting with more sculptural formClay former for plaster flat back mould
plate
scan from my sketchbook – goose and Scotts pine design. pre-bought plate with design printed on acetate for placement before preparing screen.
I have chosen these three frames to look through because in the world the teapot was designed in, they were inextricably linked.
Between 1923 and 1924, around the same time he became business director of the Bauhaus pottery, Theodor Bogler designed the Combination teapot. The Combination Teapot (also called the Modular teapot) is a design for four variations of a teapot, all assembled from the same 6 individual parts. The examples in the V&A are the original hand thrown and altered, however the design was meant for industrial mass moulding – encompassing the Bauhaus philosophy that objects should be beautiful, well designed but affordable. Bogler designed the teapot during the period when Walter Gropius, the founder and leader of Bauhaus, decided that his students should design for industry. Anna Rowland explains this in her journal article; Business Management at the Weimar Bauhaus;
“Gropius realised that the very survival of the school depended on making contact with the external world (das Werkleben), and in particular, finding industrial manufacturers for the models developed in the workshops. The more money the school could earn through the sale of its workshop products, the less dependent it had to be on funding from the Thuringian government, and therefore upon government policy.”
So, in an effort to divorce himself from the increasingly conservative government and the financial ruin sweeping the country, Gropius began to transform his school into a business. In theory the opportunity for students to design for industry was a fantastic one, linking manufacturers with innovative young designers, with new ideas about the structure of materialism could be viewed as largely positive. However, the men charged with overseeing this effort had little positive to say;
“The strains of the Syndikus’s job were enormous, and in Spring 1924 Lange resigned. As he did so, he complained that it was an impossible task to administrate an educational institution as a profit-making concern.”
Like Gropius’s plan, Bogler’s teapot was innovative in theory but failed in practice, the Combination Teapot was never actually approved for industry, it is a symbol of commercial failure. Both were thought up in a time of great political and sociological change, in Germany and the wider world.
The idea of an “educational institution as a profit-making concern.” is increasingly familiar, especially to anyone currently studying in the UK, what is startling is the differences in motivations between universities now and the Bauhaus in 1924. What would Walter Gropius think of students over 19 paying for a Foundation course? How different their solutions to saving a sinking ship are…
When does art flourish, in times of hardship or prosperity? And how can one define flourishing? I believe innovation can be a natural response to hardship but it doesn’t necessarily mean anyone is flourishing. This teapot, for example, was produced at a time when there was (according to Anna Rowland) “not a single motorized wheel” at Bauhaus and “For lack of a press to prepare the clay by expelling impurities, entire firings were frequently ruined. The pottery workshop also badly needed a Giesserei (mould-maker) so that moulds could be made. However, the press alone cost 2,000 Marks.” Interesting that Bogler managed to cast his teapot, in an environment where expertise was apparently scarce. The financial strain, caused by lack of funding from the Thungurian government, also lead Gropius to request credit from the Staatsbank, the state bank of east Germany, showing them some industrial prototypes to strengthen their case, I wonder who judged them, and how. Bankers looking at pots.
Bogler’s design was informed by the industrial process, in fact it was created in an effort to successfully utilize it. Perhaps naively, Bogler used plaster in a way that worked in the confines of the workshop but not in the factory. Rowland goes on to conclude that the philosophy of Bauhaus, to design everyday goods for everyday people, only became a possibility when designers in the workshops collaborated with industry, instead of dictating to it. Bogler did not, to anyone’s knowledge, collaborate with industry, this is possibly why it failed commercially.
I can’t find any fired examples of the first (dare I say more traditional) teapot, only the plaster example. It’s rather more dumpy, what you would expect to be mass produced, not sleek and modernist like the more popular third and fourth option, which are the most common and it seems popular. When only two really remain in the mainstream, it is easy to forget their siblings.
What I find so interesting about Bogler’s design for the teapot is not just its form and interesting approach to production, but its place in time. It is unwittingly a representative of a seminal moment in history, I can’t help but imbed it with the events of the early 20s in Germany, specifically the Weimar Republic.
Unlike the French who used income tax, the German emperor funded the first world war by borrowing, this meant that, before the end of the war, the country was already deep in the pit of debt and financial hardship it would eventually sink into. The Weimar Republic was further bankrupted by the reparations ordered in the Treaty of Versailles, when these were not paid in full the allied troops occupied the industrial Ruhr valley. Subsequently the German workers were ordered on strike by the Weimar Republic, however in order to pay them the government just printed more money, triggering the hyperinflation that left Germany in ruins. And where was Bauhaus? Smack bang in the middle of the city of Weimar.
What is really important is how this effected Bogler’s design, I suppose like many Germans after the first world war and indeed many designers, he had quite specific ideas about what should fill people’s homes and how they should be made. What is most interesting about this specific design is that it is utilitarian in both form and process of manufacture, designing this allowed Bogler to really pinpoint what he thought necessary in a teapot and cut down on any excess. As Dieter Rams famously said; “Good design is as little design as possible”. But does Bogler truly pass Rams’ test? Was it all just a little bit too complicated?
I know very little about the personal political persuasion of Theodor Bogler, only that he eventually became a monk and then a priest. What matters is that the politics of the time directly affected the economy and the economic problems of the Weimar republic were partly responsible for the dissolution of the Weimar Bauhaus and the decline in standards. Bogler was designing in a time dominated by financial hardship and the rise of fascism, his teapot, in my opinion, is unique because it is famous as a piece of design but not for its process. It is visually and not theoretically known, despite its entirely theoretical origins.
Bogler apparently continued to make pots when he was a monk, and collaborated with some ceramic workshops, perhaps he learned from the mistakes of the early Bauhaus. The teapot above was in Bogler’s possession until he died. He left it and some other pieces to the son of a close friend, who apparently used them for years, totally unaware of their value or importance. I almost think that’s better, to be used, as a functional, utilitarian object and not locked away in a cabinet, becoming a symbol of itself.
To document and monumentalise the forgotten tales of The Miner, The Troll and The Barghest of Trollers Gill.
Sometimes we are aware of green spaces only in their current state, seemingly wild and sometimes untamed but many of these places have an industrial past, a human past. Intervention into the landscape and countryside includes more than just agriculture and husbandry, especially in the north of England, there are small echos of what was once were hives of industry. Yes, the industrial revolution fuelled cities and towns, but the impact of its sudden development, and decline in the countryside, is equally important.
The subject of this project is Trollers Gill, a limestone gorge in the north Yorkshire Dales. I was, until recently, unaware of the origins of the gorge’s name, the aesthetic themes of this work have been heavily influenced by Scandinavian and northern European imagery, since thats where the name has come from. In the book ‘Place-Names of the Yorkshire Dales’ Peter Metcalfe claims the name is old Norse and translates as ‘The Troll’s Arse Ravine. The trolls of Scandinavian myths, known as jötnar, are giants that turn to stone in the sunlight and populate woodland and mountains.
Trolls do have a bit of a bad name and in many of the myths and legends they are generally the enemy of humans, i have tried to focus on the other side of this coin. we are equally their enemy. I am somewhat biased, I have tried not to make my love of John Baur’s beautifully bejewelled and majestic Trolls too obvious. I have however chosen to include pieces of the fluorspar i sieved from some clay i collected from the mouth of Gills Head mine, an easy twinkle in an eye or head torch.
The surrounding area is also home to a series of mines, some quite old, some not. Gills Head mine was only closed in the 80s, it had been used as a lead mine, then for fluorite when the lead ran dry. Fluorite is a mineral that grows alongside seams of lead, it varies in colour across the world, the pieces I found here are mostly translucent, often with black speckles, some even with tints of pink and purple.
Quite quickly I was confronted with three characters; The Miner, The Troll and Barghest, the black dog spectre of Trollerdale. Apparently the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. i knew these figures would make up the monument.
Maybe just to connect a little more with the site, I started to collect various ‘resources’, including; two kinds of clay, quartz, flouspar, some iron ritch rocks and some Lichen that I used to dye some clothes.
I thought it might be interesting to treat the site not as a place of natural beauty, but a collection of useful materials, the act of treating the land like a bottomless pit of valuable resources the human race is free to pillage, is nothing new. Ecofemenists define this as ‘Rape of the Land’, an issue of not just human nature but specifically the patriarchy. However, the miner is exploited just as the land is, he is both a perpetrator and a victim .
Mining provides work for the working classes but its exaughsting, it ultimately lines the pockets of those who are already wealthy, while simultaneously poisoning the earth. Is the industrial a matter concerning wealth, class and the patriarchy? of course it is. But thats a whole other matter that I do not have time to get into.
Handspun wool collected from barbed wire near home, dyed with yellow lichen (Xanthoria parietina) collected from Trollers Gill and bicarb from cupboard.some signs of life
Anyway, I quickly decided to use these three characters as representatives of the land, because I feel they do this quite successfully and because their story’s are relatively unknown and their collective narrative is currently untold. I spent the first week or so sketching, then visited the site, I tried to figure out what my troll would look like, I knew what its expression should be; wise, a knowing half smile, big, sedate eyes. A sense of tragedy in its expression but also a suggestion that our sense of time is not universal, that this gorge will outlive us all, the troll represents the area itself i suppose. The Monument i have chosen to create is an amalgamation of my sketchbook drawings and designs, and the two main maquettes I have created.
The second drawing was inspired by the whale eating fish toy I had as a child, in many ways, all parties have been robbed of something.
i also painted the whites of the second’s eyes with the paler clay I found at Trollers Gill.
I chose to represent the troll as the hillside, with the cavity of the mine in its head, reiterating the idea of the land as simply a resource. I also liked the relevance of the name of the mine ‘Gills Head mine” to this idea. This all feeds into one of my main themes, the concept that all the different narratives of this landscape are intertwined and inseparable, the troll cradles the Barghest in its hand, oddly nurturing, while a miner protrudes from its mouth. The troll welcomes you with an outstretched arm, showing you the way. This monument is more of a playfully informative sign post really, something to be discovered and pondered at, and hopefully make the walk ahead a little more thoughtful and exciting.
pretty much all the constructing of the maquettes and the monument itself was done using coils and slabs. the troll is a sort of vessel, inspired by what i feel is monumental pottery, made by women in west africa.
Throughout this project i have been reminded of the Gorillaz song; Fire coming out of the monkeys head, it tells the story of a village and the nearby mountain that plays host to foreign diamond miners, they are eventually met with the wrath of the deity they hack into. I suppose its relevant because of their exploration of contemporary mythologies.
Creative futures/artist research/inspiration……
Swedish Petroglyphs at Tanum – 7000 BC.
Trollers Gill is after all a Norse name, the place will have been inhabited by Anglo Saxons and Vikings alike. So i’ve included these rock drawings in my research, hopefully i’ll be able to channel the early art of these peoples.
Hole in one and Rocking pot, both 1978
Voulkos’ dissembling of ‘pottery’ both physically and theoretically has given him the status of a sort of godfather of fine art ceramics in America. His disregard for traditional aesthetics may seem like a natural progression in craft and art, to we who study him but I believe what Voulkos pursued, was at the time, quite revolutionary. By rendering a functional object entirely dysfunctional with a few swift gashes of his knife, he subverted traditional methods – not to disregard them entirely but highlight what could be achieved with a different approach.
I was, until recently, unaware of Voulkos’s successful career as a professional potter, making tableware. If his collision with abstract expressionism and Black Collage fine artists had not happened, I wonder where we, as ceramicists, would be today.
Urns (seven works), Francis Uprichard – 2015
Uprichard has created a series of urns, largely influenced I think, by Egyptian Canopic jars and ceramic lamps from the 1970s. They are garish and sludgy, but delightfully reminiscent of two vastly different aesthetics, she really champions the transformative power of glaze.
Vigeland Park, Oslo
By the time the sculptures were finished and installed, Vigelands’s supposedly distinct style was wholly unfashionable in the art world. the statues are naked because Vigeland wanted them to be timeless, not from any particular time period, suggested through clothing.The monolith, initially made in clay by Vigeland, took masons 40 years to complete. It has been suggested that he was a Nazi sympathiser, that his pieces are totalitarian and have facist themes, the tower for example, striving upward.
I think I should go there myself and figure it out.
Various pieces from Lena Peters’ collections; Secrets of the hidden north (2017) and Saints and Spirits (2018)
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Marjane Satrapi – Pages from her graphic novel Persepolis (2000)
Various photographs of Wildermann from Europe and Scandinavia by Charles Freger.
Illustration of Struwwelpeter, from the children’s book of the same name by Heinrich Hoffmann
Struwwelpeter is a character in the book who does not groom himself and so is unpopular.
Set design by Julian Crouch and director Phelim McDermott, for Phillip Glass’ opera; Satyagraha – based loosely on the life of Ghandi.
simon armitage painter
I have dedicated this section to artists and ceramicists that explore anthropomorphism and pre-classical imagery/iconography in their work. I find this is often difficult to achieve or ‘pull off’, without ripping off ancient art. Many of the following pieces teeter on the edge of this…
Village Casket, Ian Godfrey, circa 1978 Stoneware, dry brown with mottled ochre glazes, the sealed casket mounted with a mountain village of huts with birds and beasts, the sides mounted with flowers and foxes, raised on three carved feet.ANTELOPE CORNUCOPIA, C1989
On the Oxford Ceramics Gallery website, David Whiting describes Godfrey’s ceramics as “ritualistic in feeling”, he also explains; “His source material was eclectic, admiring as he was of art and ritual from a range of ancient civilisations, and able to convey something of their mysteries in his own sculptural and playful pieces.”
Cat Girl – Christina BothwellCentaur – Christina BothwellJug by Philip Eglin, 1982Adam & Eve – Raku, Philip Eglin, 2011 Virgin and Child (for Edmund), Philip Eglin, 1999. porcelain
After simply being struck by the strange beauty of the European eel, its life cycle, and mysterious situation, I began to use its symbolism or iconography as a representation of the natural or ecological character of the Thames.
Although clay is a ‘natural’ material, over time it has been deeply imbued with, and imbedded in the ‘cultural’, or the human. In an attempt to deconstruct the idea of the Thames as a resource, I have used the cultural and natural status of Thames. Even the eel, an animal, has been used as a source of food for hundreds of years. it seems that every part of the Thames is up for grabs.
