Stoke Biennial 2011

So over a month ago now I took a little visit up to Stoke. Whilst there I went to the biennial at the old Spode factory. The place was vast and very cold, holding some odd but interesting pieces of work. I wondered round looking for things that related in any way to my project.

I think my favourite from all of this was Caroline Tattersall's work (the two before the last image), probably because of the use of cast objects and the idea of them breaking form.

Project Inspiration

This whole project was inspired by my work from last year. I strived so hard all through my projects last year to create perfect fragile forms; identical to the models I had produced. Using porcelain to create these delicately thin objects meant that they had a tendency to warp or crack in either drying or firing. At the very end of the year, before my assessment I had put 3 cast porcelain forms in the kiln that were VERY thin. They were in a kiln with other peoples' work, and someone accidentally left the brick off the kiln, causing temperature fluxes within the kiln. This meant that these pieces pulled themselves apart in firing.

Initially I was gutted at them; having wanted them to be such perfect objects. However the more I looked at them, the more they grew on me. They seemed to have a character about them, more so than the perfectly formed ones around them. I began to think about the possibility that they looked like they had quite literally pulled themselves apart. Broke the mould as it were. I quite liked that a mould is made to create identical forms, and the idea that these casts had almost rebelled against this, deciding to not be what the 'should' be.

From these ideas I started to compare this to society, and how there are societal norms and people who rebel against these, in so many ways. Thus my project was born, and since then I have been experimenting with casts and ways to pull them apart and break them down.

New Blog

So I've started a new blog. A place to keep all of my thoughts and pictures during my latest ceramics project. In this project I aim to look at the cast form, and the idea of identity within it. Every cast taken from a mould is the same as the last one in appearance. I want to use the idea of identity and the ideas of the 'norm' and translate this into a collection or installation of ceramic forms, rebelling against these ideas and quite literally breaking the mould. This reflects the notions of people in society rebelling against societal norms; not wanting to be what they're 'meant' to be. I hope to encapsulate this in the ceramics, and give them an identity of their own; to make it look like the forms don't want to follow the trend anymore, and react against it.