Author Archives: Bridget Macklin

I am an artist working in the field of ceramics creating fragile porcelain pieces which are inspired by the environment or by peoples relationships with the environment and with each other and which often incorporate finds to support their narrative.

The pleasure and anxiety of working to comission!

This week I have been enjoying catching up on a number of commissions.  Some have been in the pipeline for a while, others are the result of discussions held with visitors to the Wimbledon Open Studios last month.

It is a wonderful experience to be creating a special piece for somebody and yet, at the same time, it is slightly daunting.  For much of my work to date, the only person that I have had to please has been myself.  I have been completely free to make decisions about how tall, how wide, how much to scrape back and so on.  I have not really had to think too much about whether one particular person will like it, as long as somebody does, that’s ok.  Theoretically the same goes when you are working to someone else’s contract.  You are the artist.  They are paying you to do what you do.  Yet there is a huge responsibility to get it just right for them and this does add to the pressure.

IMG_8781a
There is a huge responsibility to get it just right

This week, one of the pieces I have been focussing on is a wedding present.  I cannot say much about it, just in case it blows the element of surprise.  What I can say is that there is something delightful about making a piece which will be a permanent reminder of a very special event.  All the time that I have been with it I have been conscious of an awareness of the people for whom I am making it; those who have commissioned it and also those who will be the recipients.  This has guided every movement.  Will they like the way the line flows there?  Will that edge excite them when they realise what they can see beyond it?  If I remove this line and smooth that down a bit, will it be more evocative of the place, the time, the memory which was imagined in the initial concept?

IMG_8785
Will that edge excite them?

Now that these pieces are in the kiln I find that I am more excited than ever to get back and see how they have come out.  I am longing to give them to the people who asked for them and to watch their expressions.  They think they know what they are getting but they have had to trust me with their memories, their emotions, their special places and that has made me feel extremely privileged.  I just hope that I can prove myself worthy of that trust.

Ai Weiwei at the Royal academy

This week I visited the Ai Weiwei exhibition at the Royal Academy.  I am a bit late really, most of my friends were there weeks ago and if you haven’t been yet, well get a move on!

Ai Weiwei needs little introduction and there is so much written about him by people who know a great deal more than me so I shall not even go there.   However, I think the exhibition is worthy of a blog.  As an aspiring artist I am always intrigued by the work of people who have become household names.  What makes them so famous that we must flock to see their exhibitions?  Is it what they stand for or the beauty of their art?

Ai Wei Wei, art review
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/sep/20/ai-weiwei-royal-academy-bicycles-world-goes-pop-review

Weiwei’s work is his expression of his campaign for free speech and human rights.  But I wonder how many of the people gazing with wonder at the Bicycle Chandelier spend any time at all considering the thinking behind it.  The art speaks of conditions in Weiwei’s homeland but its mesmerising beauty risks masking something of that for me.  I find myself so overwhelmed by the beauty of the repetitive patterns in the bicycles and also in his marble that I fear that it is too easy to forget the story behind it.

I still remember seeing his Sunflower Seeds at Tate Modern back in 2010 and the stir which they caused.  When I visited the Tate it was still possible to interact with the seeds and people of all ages were to be seen lying in the installation, creating ‘sunflower seed angel pictures’ sieving them through their hands and simply sitting within the drifts of ceramic pieces.  But precisely how many of them were giving a single thought to the message behind them I wonder.  Correct me if I am wrong but is it not true that if one turns a comment into a thing of beauty or fascination, does one risk almost everyone missing the point?  And if I am correct, should art which speaks of ugly situations, such as the consequences of an earthquake or suppression of free speech be so beautiful?

https://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2015/september/sharing-in-a-series-of-small-acts-ai-weiwei-at-the-royal-academy/
https://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2015/september/sharing-in-a-series-of-small-acts-ai-weiwei-at-the-royal-academy/