April and May
have been busy, a pretty hectic combination of work and play.
It started
with a trip to Oslo National Academy of
the Arts, where I was invited to give a lecture about my practice. It was
also an opportunity to meet the staff in both the Ceramics department and in
the 3D printing facility. The facilities are extremely impressive, all housed
in a beautiful 19th century sail factory complex.
I am planning
to return for a longer period in order to experiment with their ZCorp 310 that
they have just started to use with ceramic powders. The plan is to create a
network of 3D printer practitioners exploring the theme of ceramics,
culminating in an event in the autumn of 2014.
A few days
after my return to the UK, I set off for a holiday in France with my wife
Vicky, our friend Jan and my bike. The trip by train to Montelimar was
excellent, though carrying my road bike in a bag wasn't that easy. Whilst there
I cycled from the Drôme, through the Gorge de L'Ardeche,
down into Languedoc to see friends, then up through the Cevennes to be reunited
with Vicky and Jan in Ispagnac, a beautiful village at the entrance to the
Gorge du Tarn.
I had to cut
the holiday short in order to return to London for Collect, held again at the
Saatchi Gallery, where I was showing some new pieces with Adrian Sassoon. The show was
definitely up to it's usual standard, and I was lucky to have the Prtlnd Vase
purchased by the Art Fund for the New
Walk Gallery in Leicester. The curators plan to open a digital gallery and
had researched my work and in particular the Prtlnd Vase for their presentation
to the Art Fund.
Whilst at
Collect, I took part in the first ‘Fielding Talk: Lives in Craft,
launched in memory of Amanda Fielding, the writer and curator who died in 2012.
This event, …celebrates Fielding’s passion and knowledge for the sector through
the voices and experiences of the most exciting and innovative makers in
contemporary craft.’ Glenn Adamson from the V&A chaired it with Clare
Twomey and myself in discussion around the theme of the relationship between
makers and curators. The acquisition and positioning of ‘digital craft’ has
been problematic for curators as there was uncertainty as to the placing of the
work. Fortunately for my contemporaries and I, there now appears to be a
confidence and keen interest in our work, though the interpretation of
challenging pieces can still be problematic for the curators.
Back in
Manchester, I have been continuing to explore the Mcor Matrix 300 printer that
'prints' in layers of paper. It has been a temperamental machine, but a technician’s
recent visit appears to have made it operate more smoothly. I set it off this
morning to print the first of 4 pieces to be used as moulds for the making of
ceramic sprigs for a version of the Prtlnd Vase. The body of the vase was
printed in 4 sections by Mcor, as our machine failed to build them. I plan to
have a mould produced and if talks with Wedgwood succeed, I will slipcast it in
traditional Jasperware.
And this
leads to the question I pose in the title of this piece, “Where do I go from
here?’ The reason I ask this question is that I am going through a period of
reflection about my work. Over the past 7 years I have produced a body of work
that has investigated 3D printing through the interpretation and re-design of
familiar objects such as Wedgwood and Sèvres ceramics, appropriating their
cultural significance to make comments about craft, values and the virtual
world that we increasingly inhabit.
As I have
always said, I don’t want to use the technology for its own sake, there has to
be an idea that underpins its use. I am now at the stage where I feel I need to
go further, in terms of material and process. The aim has been and still is to
produce ceramic 3D printed artworks, combining my previous experience and
knowledge of ceramics history with ‘post-industrial’ manufacturing. But this is
where Glenn Adamson steps in.
The Mcor
Matrix printer alerted me to the journey the data travels between the computer
software and the printed artwork. The only difference between the data used to
produce the paper prints of the Prtlnd vase and the SLS version, is scale.
However, unlike the SLS original the faceted sides look as though they have
been made from folded paper. Something has happened in the process that gives
the object a softer, ‘crafted’ look. So this version will not only refer to the
relationship between actual and the virtual from the standpoint of our
increasing engagement of the real world through a screen, but also record the material
process.
The other
thought-provoking piece of writing comes from Justin McGuirk in the Collect
2013 catalogue. He is talking about craft ‘fetishism’ and the difference
between being seduced by electronic gizmos and crafted objects. “The philosopher
Bruno Latour might argue that we are once again seduced by the ‘thingness’ of
things. In his essay ‘Why has critique run out of steam’ he extrapolates Martin
Heidegger’s distinction between objects and things. He writes ‘The hand-made
jug can be a thing, while the industrially made can of Coke remains an object.
While the latter is abandoned to the empty mastery of science and technology,
only the former, cradled in the respected idiom of art, craftsmanship and
poetry, could deploy its rich set of connotations.’ So we have a distinction
here between the mute machine-made object and the poetic hand-made thing. Does
this distinction help us?”[2]
And where
does it place my work?
Do I fall
between the 2 stools? And is this why I feel I need to bring a physical,
tactile connection back into my work?
I shouldn’t
care what the Adamsons and McGuirks think, as I am a maker not a critical
historian, writer or philosopher, but even before my days at the RCA I have
attempted to justify my output. It’s part of my methodology and one that
sometimes weighs heavy.
