Stick Up
30 September — 13 November 2011
As part of the British Ceramics Biennale, London based studio group Manifold formed an experimental collaboration with Stoke-on-Trent’s AirSpace Gallery.
I was paired with artist and graphic designer Phil Rawle, and together we took inspiration from old bricks and tiles found in Phil’s garden which still bore the thumb-print of the maker. We developed a participatory work, creating clay tablets that we invited visitors to Airspace to inscribe their secrets upon. We thought to later bury the fired tablets as a kind of time capsule of the things people wanted to bury back in the earth. Our installation of one of the old Spode factory workbenches and lamp as a place to inscribe your secret glyph, references the many hours of clay work embodied in the shards buried in Stoke’s earth, and the everyday secrets and dramas of their lives like thumbprints on the pots.
AirSpace Gallery and its studio artists work within a contemporary art context working in different mediums. The intention is to instigate an element of risk for both the artists and curators as both studios are removed from their individual comfort zones and work towards a challenging resolution.
The focus of the project is the exchange between two types of working methods, skill sets and knowledge. The outcome of these investigations is unpredictable and will develop organically over an intensive three day period leading up to the opening of the exhibition, which explores a newfound relationship between Ceramics and Contemporary Art.
AirSpace Gallery Artists:
Bejhat Omar Abdulla, David Bethell, Andrew Branscombe, Anna Francis, Janine Goldsworthy, Phil Rawle.
Manifold Studio Artists:
Zachary Eastwood-Bloom, Ellie Doney, Amy Hughes, Sun-Ae Kim, Hanne Mannheimer, Bethan Lloyd Worthington.
