ceramic art – Page 35 – Bridget Macklin

Putting Your Work in Context

College recently asked us to answer the following four questions and so I decided to share my responses with you in an effort to clarify my own thoughts. Here goes . . . . . . .

What is my work about and how does it relate to other work, in ceramics or other visual arts fields, in a theoretical context.

005 (7) — I think that my over-riding need is for my work to have some kind of narrative; the relationship between the interior of a vessel and its exterior or between one piece and another in a group together with the origins of the idea is of vital importance to me and so it needs to shine through in the finished piece.

Jung saw a drive in all of us to become ‘the person we are born to be’; to achieve Individuation. In my constantly shifting lifestyle I have often felt quite a loss of identity. The starting point for my work is something profoundly Cornish in me. I am using it to express my desire to belong whilst also reflecting my fascination with contrast. I want to work with the materials, incorporating their behaviours and characteristics into my work rather than imposing my control over them. But, more than anything else, I want to incorporate an element of luck and chance into my work. My work is based more in emotion and intuition than in logic and function and I think that I am drawn to certain sorts of art because of a rather romantic desire to escape from convention. I can relate to ideas about giving strength to individuals, about their place in nature and opposition to oppressive social convention. I find renewal in nature and in the wild places. I have a love of the fundamentals of life; the relationships which we build with each other and with our home and the fragility and vulnerability of those relationships. At the same time I am not afraid to break the rules and try new ways of doing things. Now I have discovered the delicious unpredictability of adding found materials to my work I suspect that there will be no going back.

Where is my work ‘located’ in relation to other ceramics or other visual art.

My work is non functional, ceramic, abstract art. Often it seems to be more about process than about the finished piece. I am excited by the work of Adam Buick, who makes moon jars using locally dug clay and finds which convey a sense of place. He draws paths as a motif on his pots which he uses to represent his actual and metaphoric journeys through a place. He considers that the understanding of a landscape arises from moving through it, providing context with paths, like common routes of experience, guiding us through it. I also find inspiration in the work of experimental abstract artists such as Gillian Lowndes, a ceramicist, and Richard Long, a land artist.

Where do I see my work being shown and sold.

That is a very good question! I have already exhibited at exhibitions and have succeeded in selling through galleries and also at the Open Studios in Wimbledon, but where would I really like to see it sold? I have a suspicion that it needs to find its way into a contemporary gallery before I start to be successful but that seems like a distant dream at the moment. I would love to show at Ceramic Art London and at the Contemporary Ceramics Centre. I do not envisage selling at craft fairs where the buyers are looking for useful things like mugs and bowls which I do not really have any interest in making. Having said that, I can envisage a time when my work might return to some level of functionality but never on a scale of mass production.

I would love to have my work shown here!

What price will I put on it and why.

Last year at the Wimbledon Artists Open Studios I was told that I should triple my prices. At that show I was charging a maximum of £200 for what I considered to be my most interesting work. How did I come to that figure? Well it certainly wasn’t about the cost of materials. My work was more newspaper than clay and had only been through a single firing. Nor was it related to the time it had taken to make, which amounted to many hours of careful, laborious and at times rather dull effort. So what was it that I was selling? I suppose it was the execution of the idea, and possibly also the metaphor with which I had imbued the piece. What ever it was, not only did I sell that, most expensive piece but I sold a good deal more besides. This year, having followed the afore mentioned advice I charged in excess of £600 for some pieces and sold virtually nothing. Now there could be any number of reasons for this change in my fortunes; the right people did not happen to come along; my work has changed and is no longer so appealing; I was tired from all the recent effort and did not shine, hence neither did my work. But I cannot ignore the possibility that this time people decided that my work was over priced! So how on earth do you decide?

What should you charge for a few small pieces of clay which are so fragile they risk blowing away in the next high wind?

Speak up or Shut Up

We had an interesting debate in college a week ago on the subject of whether to talk and write about one’s art or whether it is better to let it speak for itself. I found myself rather reluctantly on the side in favour of not speaking – always difficult for me! I thought that I would have some difficulty coming up with any reasons to keep quiet but having got over the slightly trite comment that talking gives me a headache I discovered that I was warming to the idea. There are artists who chose not to give any narrative about their work and I confess that in the past I have found this rather unhelpful of them. On the other hand I now realise that it does actually limit a viewer’s interpretation. If you tell everything there is to tell you do run a number of risks. Firstly you set your work in a specific context which while on the face of it might be considered helpful can also be quite restrictive. It denies people the right to create their own narrative about the work. The first significant piece of work that I sold was called ‘Don’t Put me in a Box’. For me it was a deep and meaningful piece about labelling and about wanting to break out of any category that people decided to put me in. For the person who bought it, to my confusion, it was apparently about blocks of cheese. I tried to tell him otherwise but I gave up. Now I realise that I was right to stop. Interpretation is personal and I should not be trying to impose my thoughts on others unless they wish to know.

Should I let this work speak for itself or should I explain my idea?

A second reason for letting the work speak for itself is that you run the risk of setting it in stone, within a specific era which might reduce the understanding of people who come after you. My boxes referenced Myers Briggs but who is to say that anyone in the next 100 years will have any understanding of their theory of personality types. Indeed, I rather hope that they do not!

Of course there are other things which suggest you should keep quiet. If the art is good enough, surely it can speak for itself? Its meaning should come through the work and if it isn’t good enough then perhaps you should not have put it out there in the first place! On the other hand I find myself wondering how those artists who prefer to remain quiet ever get noticed at all. Do they really rely entirely on the work or do they have some rich or influential patron who pushes it into the limelight and talks it up for them? If so, would they like to pop in and visit me and let me know where to find such an envoi! Edmund de Waal comments that ‘Ceramics is an art whose practitioners have become peculiarly suited to silence. Their silence about their work and that of their peers has become a symbol for their seriousness as artists, in a way that is radically different from other arts. The truly authentic and serious potter is one who unknowingly makes pots, whose artistic journey is unmapped.’ Well there are several points about this statement which I have difficulty digesting. Not least I am left wondering what that says about de Waal himself since no-one would suggest that he is silent about his work! But there certainly are ceramic artists who have been extremely reluctant to speak about their work, Lucie Rie, whose pots ‘speak for themselves’ (Bernard leach) for one.

I confess that I do not trust my work to shout loudly enough yet, which is why my open studio display is littered with short explanations of the work on view.

There are others who believe that, however silent an artist chooses to be about their work, ‘nothing has a silent life, that everything exists in context, things talk to one another, discourse occurs whether we want it to or not.’ (Kate Starkey talking about the views of Jeffry Jones.)

Of course the ultimate irony for me personally is that I would not be writing this blog if I wanted my art simply to speak for itself. Indeed I suspect that the development of rapid, web-based communication makes it increasingly difficult to be silent. There is an expectation that all artists will have a presence on social media and that without it they are nothing. Certainly the current open Studios even at Wimbledon Artist Studios, in which I am taking part, has highlighted for me the need to have business cards, blurb, website, social media presence etc, etc and to be prepared to discuss the thinking behind my work with those who chose to come and visit the artists in their workplace. It would be rude not to engage these people in conversation about the work they have come to view.

It is also quite amusing that the debate in college coincided neatly with the handing in of a 4000 word essay on our practice. If we wished the work to speak for itself we could probably have saved ourselves the exercise, although I suppose we would risk failing the diploma which at this late stage would seem a bit of a shame.