CHAPTER 7 FROM PLINTH TO PERFORMANCE
7.2 MOVING FROM THE GALLERY
Personally, my practice focus has shifted from a search for a purposeful location in the gallery to a wider arena. To illustrate this, several works are considered here alongside those of other contemporary artists in the ceramic tradition (Gillian Clarke, David Cushway, Keith Harrison and Phillip Lee) as evidence of an imperative embedded in the way work is developing, i.e. to re- locate. Particular features tend to remove this work from the gallery and consequently alter the relationship between maker, work and audience. Early in personal ceramic practice efforts were made to create work suitable for the gallery. Three Cylinders, for instance, was a static work demonstrating
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transience in high-temperature, reduction-fired clay-free material, which I originally devised for my B.A. programme, contrasting a pillar-like form – resonating with stability and endurance – with patent material fragility (Figure 7.1).
Figure 7.1 Sarah Gee Three Cylinders. Parallels and Connections conference, NGC Sunderland. 18–20.03.09. Each element approx. 11x5.5” diameter
However, such work did not, as I wished, invite engagement given curatorial constraints of a standard gallery setting, where physical engagement is discouraged, even forbidden, particularly with fragile pieces. Exploring impermanence during the research programme, different contexts for work gained importance because of a growing interest in material (see Chapter 5), enabling the pursuit of different types of work, and also an emerging
sensitivity to location (see Chapter 6), encouraging greater exploitation of place in generating meaning.
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Increasingly, practitioners seek contexts compatible with a performative turn in ceramics, particularly in the light of connections between site and meaning in expressing impermanence (as evidenced in the variety of work involved in the research). Development of such work draws in a number of perspectives and each artist clearly negotiates these individually, whether derived directly from a shift in attitudes to impermanent work or from a general acceptance that artists wish to make and present work in their own way.
For instance, Cushway’s work is increasingly film or video based. It is
interesting, in discussing the constraints of the formal gallery setting, to note his comment about how his video work has come to be presented:
the other two films [apart from Fragments] are in a glass case in a vitrine in the Museum of the Mind in the National Gallery65, which I think is quite interesting because they are in a context that I thought they would never be shown in. But they look amazing.
They are inside a glass case, but they are only films, so they don’t need the protection of the glass case, but they’ve removed a section of the ceramics collection to put two monitors in. But the work still works fundamentally because it’s how the work was intended as a purely visual thing, something that you take in with your eyes…
So it’s really interesting that they are inside glass vitrines because that comes loaded with all kinds of interesting baggage. Cushway (Interview 10.11.11, Appendix 5)
As he hints, the glass case is anachronistic, but acts symbolically to endorse the value of a video work. The work, although not designed necessarily for it, has been worked into a standard gallery setting, an indication of how the gallery increasingly accommodates contemporary art, including new media. Other artists, as this section also indicates, have found ways of presenting their work in a more meaningful way than the gallery context would
historically permit, during site-specific events.
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165 7.2.1 Impermanence and intent
A feature of contemporary ceramic art emerging as impermanent expression from an institutional environment is redirection of the maker’s original
intentions (discussed below, pp.168-173 and elsewhere). As indicated in 7.1, pp.1158-162, the reframing of ceramic work, in particular where its character is fragile, ephemeral or mutable, lies increasingly within the context of live art, event or performance. This is explored through Nag Puja and Clarke’s
accidentally impermanent piece.
(a) Nag Puja: an environmental installation in a nature park, in lowland Nepal
during a bird-watching tour was generated from a personal idea, and enriched by its development as a collaborative venture. It was thoroughly site- and occasion-specific. The outcome was completely unpredicted (also unpredictable), enriched and altered by the crossing of cultural boundaries. (Appendix 1.ix).
Figure 7.2 Sarah Gee Nag Puja, Chitwan National Park, Nepal. 05-06.05.11. General view prior to firing
A chance encounter with a cobra with a den close to, but undisturbed by, our camp had a huge impact. It was
remarkable to be near a large snake so
unperturbed by close human activity (only close encounters with Gray Whale mothers and calves have evinced a similar level of trust) and local people’s
accommodating attitude towards it was striking, at a time when stimuli for
166 making work in the forest were sought.
A snake was made from a number of hand-pressed clay discs, a head and tail being fashioned also from local brick clay, for firing in the forest near the cobra's den, using dead sal tree leaves(Shorea robusta has religious
significance for both Hindus and Buddhists) and wild elephant dung gathered from the forest.
The tour party and local tracker team had been involved in gathering the fuel and our tour leader, a Brahmin newly taking on his priestly responsibilities on the death of his father, helped to determine where the fire could safely be laid, in a small glade close to the camp (Figure 7.2).
Both tour party and local team became increasingly involved, discussing the installation and preparing the firing site (Figure7.3).
Given the low-temperature open-firing technique, used previously for the series of ‘hearths’ during my BA programme, it was clear the work would not survive the monsoon season – experiments with a monsoon rainstorm and raw brick clay had been undertaken earlier on this tour, the pieces
disintegrating within hours. When the Hindu trackers were made aware that the intention was to salute the cobra by means of an impermanent
installation, they immediately said they would build a Shiva shrine close by, unconcerned by the installation’s transience.
The Brahmin priest wished to preside over the firing, which everyone was involved in tending. The trackers and camp staff cleared a patch under the sal tree and made a shrine from river-worn stones with tour party help. The fire cooled overnight. Ash and debris was cleared away at dawn, and simultaneously the new shrine to Shiva was consecrated, involving puja by the local workers, the Brahmin priest, and myself (see Figure 7.4).
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Figure 7.3 Participation in Nag Puja. Chitwan National Park. 05.05.11
Figure 7.4 Nag Puja and Shiva shrine. Doing puja during consecration ceremony, Chitwan National Park. 06.05.11
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The tracker who initiated the shrine-building ceremoniously gave me a yellow and red cord (doro in Nepali) to commemorate the installation, and said it would bind me permanently to the place and the event.
The work moved significantly from the first concept as personal homage to the cobra. It would have been very different without the Nepali input in particular. Installation and shrine blended to honour the presence of the cobra, a demigod in the Hindu pantheon, and associated with Shiva by the people at Chitwan66.
The cooperative culmination of this installation was welcome, though
unanticipated, and provoked personal consideration of a more central place for collaboration, as a type of Bourriaud-esque social engagement.
Previously (e.g. Tidal Transience, see 6.2.1, pp.139-142) the involvement of others had been as witnesses rather than co-operators. Nag Puja was exhilarating in freeing me, while instigating the project, from total
responsibility for its process and outcome, and in demonstrating the pro- active capacity of others to engage, in Bourriaud’s terms horizontally, in a creative enterprise initiated by someone else. I contend that such a result may emerge more readily from working in this ‘open’ way than from studio- and gallery-based practice, where the maker has a more directive locus.
you could almost define impermanence, as much as the obvious thing about quick disappearance against long-lasting existence, in terms of the willingness on the artist’s part to embrace and to allow that appropriation, or an unwillingness to. The more permanent you want it to be, the more you make it of permanent material, put it behind [glass], build it big and immoveable. M. J. Gee (Discussion, 13.02.15. Appendix 8)
(b) Accidental impermanence: The performative aspect of Clarke’s 2013
vessel (discussed below) was engendered by material and process. While resident at Sanbao Ceramic Art Institute (October 2013, see Appendix 9 for journal extracts) we were part of a group undertaking a paper kiln/fume firing workshop, experimenting with various additions to biscuit fired pieces and
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Our Brahmin colleague, who knew about my interest in impermanence, donated a trident for the shrine. Shiva’s trident connects with the theme of impermanence, connecting time past, time present, and time future.
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undertook kiln construction and firing. Clarke made a particularly intriguing piece – a sphere using local porcelain – binding it with packets of oxides for fume-firing67, her intention being to bring it home following the ceramic- related trip.
On removal from the kiln (a one-off firing construction), the hollow porcelain sphere broke in her hand, probably as a result of thermal shock in
conjunction with material weakness. I was admiring, and photographing the fume effects on the piece, when its disintegration commenced (see Figures 7.5 a/b/c and 7.6).
While this active alteration (this ceramic performance) and its outcome were positively enjoyable for me as a maker engaged in impermanence, Clarke was dismayed. On returning to England she considered and wrote about it:
So what of my broken pot from Sanbao? It will never be impermanent, given the nature of fired clay. I suppose if I ground it into dust it could disappear into the soil or [be] scattered in the sea, but maybe then it could still have a significance, a bit like people’s ashes when they die?... already the band around it has created a lot of black dust. It is sitting on a piece of Chinese newspaper [Figure 7.6] because I like the black dust…I put a bit of masking tape round it to keep it together until I decide how to let it fall to pieces… I actually think it is very beautiful and a bit of me wants to glue it back together… for now, I’m going to leave it alone and see what happens to it and see how I feel about it as time goes on. Clarke (Personal communication, November 2013) I responded:
it is such a beautiful piece partly because it prompts us to use memory to re-create the moment it came out of the firing, that fleeting moment of being in one piece, its exquisite perfection and our amazement. I can still feel the excitement of seeing it nestling in your hand, of you turning it in your hand, so we were able to see the complexity and elegance it embodied. And partly
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An unpredictable technique, in this case using a paper kiln, with chemical interaction between clay and packets of oxides
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Figure 7.5 a/b/c Clarke’s accidentally impermanent piece as it emerged from paper kiln firing, Sanbao Ceramic Art Institute, Jingdezhen, China. 27.10.13
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it is because it is taking its own course without human intervention. It has engaged us both through its beauty, its
uniqueness and its aliveness. Sarah Gee (Personal correspondence, 19.11.13)
Clarke replied:
It is interesting what you say about the importance of the medium in thinking about impermanence. I used to teach art to children and they always wanted to keep their ceramic pieces but were only too happy to discard paintings and drawings to the bin. It seemed the 2D work was rarely good enough but the ceramic pieces had a life of their own, independent of their maker. (Personal correspondence, 16.12.13.)
Figure 7.6 Gillian Clarke’s impermanent piece, Isle of Wight. December 2013
This work is accidental impermanence rather than a failed firing due firstly to the response to the event, and the maker’s consideration of the
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object (it was still sitting undisturbed on its Chinese newspaper in her studio on a visit in 2014); secondly the connection between object and maker having developed since its firing, possibly rendering it difficult for her to consider it a failed pot; and thirdly, as percipient, a personal view of it is as an aesthetic experience – one which the gallery could not capture, as co-presence was essential.
Correspondence with Clarke is quoted at length to indicate the performative nature and independence of the piece from the maker’s original intention. In a materialist’s terms (Bennett, 2010, p.17), this piece has ‘vitality’, which she explains (Bennett, 2010, p.viii) as ‘the capacity of things… not only to impede or block the will and designs of humans but also to act as quasi agents or forces with trajectories, propensities, or tendencies of their own’ (endorsed in the last extract from Clarke).
These two experiences provoked a spiral of reflection, examination and testing regarding intent, manifested in other research-programme work, particularly RePlace, described in Chapter 5. They illustrate a shift in the role of the maker from studio work, to more direct engagement of others, and in the role of material, from passive means of expression to active player, in shaping work and its meaning. In both respects, relationships have changed and dynamism has been generated.
Exploration of the role and place of the artist as a particular outcome of this experience offers a comparator for considering the practice of other ceramic artists currently working with clay impermanence through Bourriaud’s (2010) relational-art prism, moderated by critiques of Bishop (2004) and Damir (2013), among others68.
The transient physical object or event being more elusive as a container for a maker’s meaning than a durable art work, it is evident that impermanent ceramic art loosens the artist’s control over the ‘meaning’ integral to an object as opposed to that embodied in experience. Through impermanent
expressivity artists are focusing more on the nature of process, the
68 Bourriaud’s work has engendered a large volume of responses, critiques and follow-ups, beyond the restricted scope of this thesis
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materiality presented by an object, and the engagement of the percipient. As the object alters or disintegrates, the opportunity for meaning-creation passes between maker and percipient, being lodged more in the memory and the mind than in a physical reference point. Interpretation being no longer privileged to the creator, artistic intention has to focus differently, or at the least the maker must loosen control, as indicated in the quotation in 7.2.1(a), p.168 (also Appendix 8).
Emerging from this review of practice, in addition, is recognition that
impermanence is as much about change as it is about destruction; indeed, perhaps even more so. Clarke (and also Livingstone, in 4.2.1, p.92) makes a significant point about the durability of ceramic, even when form is lost
beyond recognition. However, despite chemical endurance, in the situations studied in this thesis the ‘object’ dissolving into an unconsidered ‘thing’ (Brown, 2003, cited in Knappett, 2014, p.175) has lost its physical form, and even its material presence. In terms of this research, it has lost its integrity and the resulting unrecognisability renders it invisible; thus impermanence is an appropriate descriptor.
This loss of physicality in the form of the object is more than a loss in the form of expression of an idea because it is simultaneously an opportunity for the percipient to interpret and generate a narrative, based on her/his own experience of the trigger-work (the impermanent piece). As indicated in the discussion quoted in 7.2.1(a), pp.165-168, while reasons for making the work, determining its process, form and realisation, are inevitably important to the artist, in making impermanence a major characteristic she/he is able to relinquish ownership, empowering the percipient to engage directly,
physically, emotionally and intellectually, and thus create personal meaning/s without the burden of second-guessing the artist’s desired response.
7.2.2 Ceramic presence
The role of the clay itself was important in the genesis and realisation of Nag
Puja, as in the work discussed in Chapter 5. Following an earlier visit to the terai69, it was planned to make environmental work in the forest, firing pieces
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in hollow trees which had been observed acting like chimneys when local people did the seasonal burning of forest under-storey. In the event, this was not feasible, but having pre-ordered some local clay, several days were spent experimenting to understand its qualities and limits. It was very crumbly, gritty brick body, difficult to work.70 I resorted to squashing it between my palms to make a number of flattish discs as well as simple pinch-pots – about the only forms the clay’s friability would tolerate (Figure 7.7).
Figure 7.7 Clay elements for Nag Puja, showing friable nature of the raw clay. 5 May 2011
This simple process stimulated very direct engagement with the material. Also, because it was locally sourced, it was familiar to the Nepali people involved. Making work with local relevance, with local material, deepened the work’s personal significance for all involved.
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All clay bodies dictate to some degree how they can be handled and formed. Respect for a material’s specifics and its match with appropriate processes is a crucial element of the skill-base in ceramics. As Hodder (2012, p.48)
states: ‘the forms of things at least partly derive from the materials’; and ‘[T]he potters [sic] knowledge of the performance characteristics of different materials… will affect her decisions as she aims at certain goals’ (p.56), supporting the anthropologist’s contention regarding ‘the idea that things render tangible or actualise in a performative way important aspects of social organisation, culture, systems of thought, or actions’71
(Lemonnier, 2012, p.14). In the case of Nag Puja, the material was particularly awkward, behaving as if it was exerting its will, in its resistance to shaping; and the performativity combined material, process, maker and collaborators. The physicality of clay is noted by other ceramicists; for instance Sormin (2007) says ‘I am curious about the fractured, unpredictable, wet spaces of ceramics’. Maiolino similarly is attracted by its very formlessness (cited at head of Chapter 5).
Reflection on Nag Puja and similar experience as a maker (e.g. Return to
Koshi, utilising the same clay in slip form; see Chapter 4 for discussion of this
event-work) offers support to a Latourian actor-network interpretation of relationships between objects and humans.
Kim and Siefert (2007, p.235), seeking to articulate shifts in art-based aesthetics, state: ‘Performativity is… not related to the concept of an intending subject that seems to underlie certain goal-related actions’ – a statement endorsed by the way clay behaves in impermanent art works. Without the contentious concept of intentionality72, materials can and do impact on percipients (as in Fallacy) and on their immediate context (as in
Rift).
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My italics
72 For which Latour’s Actor-Network Theory is often criticised
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The adoption of work (such as Njalsdottir’s of RePlace) can be read in
Fischer-Lichte’s (2008) terms regarding the connection between material and percipient generating performance; and she tellingly also states:
The performance brings forth its materiality exclusively in the present and immediately destroys it again the moment it is created, setting in motion a continuous cycle of generating materiality. Fischer-Lichte (2008, p.76. See also chapter head quotation, p.159)
Both the material and the humans performed during the cobra installation; the clay continues to perform unseen as it alters, disintegrating in the now abandoned tourist camp. Equally, each Mao head73 appropriated from
Fallacy still engages those attracted to them74, altering its relationship with