ONE: To explore practical applications of impermanence as an important feature of contemporary artistic expression stemming from the ceramic tradition, and to identify theoretical frameworks relevant to, and offering convincing contexts for, such practice.
TWO: To evidence praxis, reflectively combining theoretical and creative aspects as a means of articulating the bond between theory and practice in this area of contemporary ceramic art practice.
The specific areas which the research investigates connect with the issues outlined in 1.2 (pp.13-17), i.e.:
- Identification, description and analysis of those particular features characterising the intentions, nature and impact of ceramic
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- Exploration of characteristics of impermanent work of contemporary practitioners, including my own, with a history in the ceramic tradition who use clay as a core material, and relevant theoretical frameworks through which to illuminate them;
- Articulation of the nature of impermanence in contemporary ceramic art practice and its artistic environment.
These areas for exploration are contextualised by discussion in Chapter 2 of contemporary ceramic discourse to explain its emergence in, and relevance to, ceramic art practice.
1.5 PROPOSITIONS
The thesis seeks to explain why the material and its processes contain something particular that makes working in a temporally-sensitive mode with ceramic (a term here embracing both raw clay and fired clay), a significant mode of expression in contemporary practice, and Chapter 4 discusses this creative, rather than functional, use of impermanence.
The specific propositions explored as aspects of the argument are that: a. The use of clay has significance beyond being merely a vehicle for
impermanent artistic expression, the material itself carrying social/cultural meaning (Chapter 5);
b. Artists are working with impermanence in a medium generally perceived to be durable and permanent. This impacts significantly on an art work’s reception (Chapter 4), due at least partly to meaning being embedded in the material itself (Chapter 5) and to its relationship with site (Chapter 6); c. By working with impermanence, practitioners from the ceramic tradition
are moving contemporary ceramic art practice significantly into a time- based arena more familiar in the performance, installation and live art arenas (Chapter 7);
d. Record and evidence of what is essentially a transient form of art is in itself challenging to the character of impermanent work, and may also inhibit the artist’s intentions in deliberately making it (Chapter 8).
20 1.6 MOTIVATION FOR THE RESEARCH
As indicated in 1.1 (pp.8-12), my interest in clay stems from early childhood experience. When I was invited as a small child to try my hand at throwing on a potter’s wheel, I was overwhelmed by his mastery of the clay and refused his invitation. This rejection of an early opportunity to engage directly with the material and process has always been at the back of my mind, and as an adult I have enjoyed collecting, and connecting with, both functional and decorative ceramic. I have occasionally wondered about the identity of that Cornish potter, who sowed a seed which took fifty years to germinate.
While always enjoying the exercise of domestic craft skills (e.g. knitting, embroidery, tapestry, felting), I complemented this by taking up pottery on a vocational basis nearly two decades ago, thus realising a latent desire to fill the clay vacuum I had created as a child.
I enjoyed the engagement with clay, the transformation of raw clay to fired ceramic and the mysteries of glazes, oxides and firings. However, the nature of my vocational class (which resembled a club for potters lacking their own equipment, rather than a learning environment) left significant gaps in my skill base, experience and understanding, and I therefore sought out the more structured learning regime and environment of a degree course.
The part-time B.A. in Glass and Ceramics was both a resolution of the lacunae I had perceived, and a means of opening me up to a creative and conceptual consideration of ceramics. I found my capacity to engage fully with the programme both liberating and energising: I presented both ceramic and glass work at the degree show, having taken the opportunity to test my limits in relation to both glass and clay and their differing processes.
However, my primary material was clay.
1.6.1 Early practice
On graduation, there was uncertainty regarding my creative focus and its place in an art context. Making gallery work was relatively antipathetic, making being characterised by deliberate avoidance of collectability and
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commercial appeal, and latterly, in addition to working with clay, by the use of a non-clay material which I had devised specifically to produce fragile
installation work.
Degree work (see Figures 1.2-1.5), offered representations of
impermanence through the use of fragile materials, utilising personal experience as the basis of its content.
A rationale for an individual approach to making work had not, at this stage, been articulated. I simply responded to the urge to make work as ideas and emotions presented themselves, including the devastating 2004 tsunami, the aftermath of which I had witnessed on a visit to Pondicherry in 2008.
1.6.2 Developing practice in the research context
The shift from intuitive to ‘aware’ practice enabled the identification of recurring features (see 3.6.1, p.73) to underpin the research exploration described in greater detail in subsequent chapters. Alongside my developing focus on ceramics, my interest in textile creativity has also been of
importance in my praxical development.
As Figures 1.1 and 1.8 demonstrate (and as reflected in 5.2, pp.113-118), work is not exclusively in clay, but it is a core material, raw, fully or biscuit fired (a table of research-related practical work is provided in Appendix 2). The shift towards environmental work noted in 1.1.1 (pp.8-10) has precedent, through the undergraduate hearth project (Figure 1.2), exploring the
influence of environmental artists including Goldsworthy and Nash. As stated in 1.2.2 (p.14) hand-pressed elements of raw clay (e.g. earthenware,
stoneware, raku) were dried before being fired on open ground. The impact of variation in firing temperature was evident as the pieces overwintered, the centres of the hearths, where heat was greatest, being most durable.
Inevitably, given the process and location in a working allotment, the work was transient, although the idea of making impermanent work was not unreservedly central to practice at this stage.
Alongside the increased focus on ceramic impermanence since graduation, interactivity and accessibility by others also developed as aesthetic
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characteristics, and are therefore subject to particular consideration as aspects of the research programme.
One of the first research-related projects, Losing It Rose Field (2010, see Figure 4.6a/b) tested, inter alia, the impact of ‘private’ installation, not publicly accessible (actually seen only by two others); thus raising issues regarding its status as an art work and the nature of ‘private’ art (see Appendix 1.vi for discussion).
Losing It (see also Figures 8.4, 1.6 - after two months’ exposure) was an
environmental installation work of commissioned ceramic elements, of limited duration. Raw ceramic elements were exposed to the weather, on open ground, over a period of five months, where they deteriorated, dissolved into the soil, eventually being covered by spring vegetation. The progress of the work, of finite but un-predetermined duration, was recorded periodically with still photography.
Figure 1.6 Sarah Gee. Losing It Rose Field. Approx. 150x150”. Olive Street Allotment No.1, Headland, Hartlepool. Unfired bone china (after two months) 2010.
In common with other practitioners, I commissioned the roses for the work from a flower maker in The Potteries, thus making commentary on the failing British pottery industry.
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Environmental installations have developed from the private nature of Losing
It to invite attention through location, position and form, and offer
opportunities, as indicated in 1.1.1, p.8 and 9.3.3, pp.216-217, for their finders to engage with and take ownership of the art-making process. Reflecting on the development process, change, transience and an open, egalitarian aesthetic have developed as characteristic features.
RePlace Orkney (Figure 1.7) was an environmental installation project to
return materials of various kinds to Orkney in the form of art work. The
project was conceived as direct result of identifying the possibility of acquiring soil from a major archaeological excavation on Orkney, together with
accumulated yarn from Orkney (see Appendix 1.i for the project practice report).
Figure 1.7 Sarah Gee, RePlace Orkney: Ness of Brodgar. Approx. 48x12” max. Ness of Brodgar Archaeological excavation. Raw Neolithic midden soil. 2012 onwards. Collaborative interment by Rik Hammond. Image © R. Hammond
The challenge for this project was to realise my long-held wish to combine clay impermanently with textile in a major installation. It was devised as a cooperative project with six others who produced knitted contributions to their own design, utilising yarn previously sourced from Orkney (indigenous
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commercial purposes). The relative anonymity in presenting work in the public domain enabled me to consider issues of record, witness and interaction.
From experience and reflection on RePlace and other early projects, I gained clarity regarding the nature of my creativity and was therefore in a position to develop my praxis.
1.7 ARTICULATING PRAXIS