It’s been a long while since I’ve had time to blog. This is because I have been fully immersed making in the studio for the whole of August on my installation for British Ceramics Biennial. I am working on an installation for Spode Works, the wonderfully dilapidated, abandoned ceramics factory in Stoke that is now owned by Stoke-on-Trent City Council and is British Ceramics Biennial’s main venue.
This part of the Made in Korea project involves the work made by the Korean artists in residence, Kyung Won Baek and Jin Kim, who did a residency at The Ceramic House for 7 weeks during May-June. The work they created will be exhibited alongside my new work, presented in parallel, literally – two parallel wall pieces facing each other, creating an intimate installation space within Spode Works.
The Koreans’ work responds directly to the ceramic manufacturing traditions of Wedgwood in Stoke-on-Trent, with which they are drawing parallels with Korean manufacturing industry, in particular the female-dominated labour force and positions traditionally held by women. My work takes its inspiration from traditional Korean roof tiles. Whilst in Korea on my research trip last year, I visited many palaces and looked at traditional Korean architecture, and one of the defining characteristics of these pavilions is the ubiquitous presence of roof tiles, which form a functional and aesthetic purpose edging the roofs. I also learnt about them in Seoul National Museum, where there are many examples on display. It is very fitting that I should choose this as my main point of inspiration in the creation of a piece of work that intentionally refers to Korean ceramic architectural heritage, as in my own public art practice I always aim to combine functionality with aestheticism as well as the obvious fact that they are tiles, my main artform. Serendipity indeed. It feels like it this project was just waiting for me to discover!
I started the making process in June and worked alongside the Korean artists in residence, but this past month has been an intensive period that has reached a crescendo in the past week with a succession of extremely late nights working past midnight to get firings on. Delaying a firing by one single night could mean not enough time to remake pieces if the glaze comes out wrong, or a piece cracks, both of which have happened, of course! Timing is tight. I leave for Stoke-on-Trent in 5 days! There is very little leeway for error. But on the whole, I am on track and it’s looking (tentatively) good!
Luckily, I was able to temporarily shelve my current public art commission (aided by inflexible planners blocking my proposal on rigid planning grounds designed for building houses with no consideration for sculpture, regardless of the suitability of the proposal and relevance to the site). So, the whole commission is on hold, thankfully allowing me several months to concentrate on this. In fact, the extra time has been essential.
This piece has been an adventure in the making. I am using porcelain and slip casting into four styles of mould that, together, will form the silhouette of a pavilion roof. The construction of the pavilion has been a long-drawn out process with much to-ing and fro-ing and u-turning of ideas. Barney, the director of BCB, has proved himself to be not only a pillar of support, but a fountain of ideas. Some of them have led me in one direction only to be transplanted. I went quite far down the route of actually employing a wood worker to make a wooden architectural structure to apply the tiles on to. It could have been effective, but realistically only with more time and a larger budget. So, back to my original silhouette roof idea inspired by traditional pavilions. The composition is made up of my version of traditional Korean roof tiles, observing traditional geometric patterns and Korean floral designs that are traditionally found on ceramic vessels – lotus flowers, peonies, chrysanthemums and cherry blossom.
I have taken the form of the pavilion and filled it with relief ceramic tiles to describe the various components of the architecture. An edge of circular and crescent-shaped tiles gently curves down from an apex, with a triangular feature and a second row of roof tiles forming a horizontal line. Beneath that, I have designed two more rows of tiles inspired by the ornate wooden decoration on the pavilions.
I have tested several different methods of colouring the porcelain, including colouring the clay body itself to create an encaustic effect. I gravitated towards my preferred use of coloured glazes with details picked out in oxides painted underneath the glaze. Some test firings resulted in such beautiful results, whole plans were changed to accommodate them.
The most fortunate thing that has particularly aided this period of making is that it coincided with my first ever Erasmus student placement in the studio. Weronika is studying a PhD in ceramics at Wroclaw, Poland, and arrived in perfect time to help on this project. It has been a revelation having an experienced maker helping in the studio, especially on a piece as ambitious as this. I have been working with volunteers in the studio for many years, but there is a huge difference between having to teach someone everything and being able to trust their capability and knowledge. The irony is that apparently students can no longer opt for the UK as a destination for Erasmus due to Brexit! So just when I discovered a good thing… but maybe we will be lucky and the nightmare will never even happen…At the same time Izzy popped into my studio. She is about to sublet a space and offered help too and has been a huge help sanding every single piece to perfection.
Nicki Lang from Tela Films is making a documentary about the whole Made in Korea project, and duly came back to the studio to film my making processes.
The intention is that the two wall pieces will evoke a cultural conversation between UK and Korean ceramic traditions. They will be linked by a four-channel sound installation by Joseph Young, composed of the sounds of hand-made clay making processes that I recorded in artists’ studios in Korea and the sounds of industrialised ceramic production that Joseph recorded in Johnson Tiles Factory in Stoke-on-Trent when we took the Korean AiRs to the site visit to Stoke. Joseph, who also has a studio at Phoenix Brighton, has been creating a multi-layered soundscape that will fill the space between the two installations, the Korean hand-making noises emanating from my Korea roof tile inspired installation, and the industrial Stoke factory sounds positioned next to the Koreans’ Wedgwood inspired piece. More about the rest of the sound components in the next post. In the meantime, I need to get this pavilion finished and ready to travel!
