British Ceramic Biennial 2009
Stoke-on-Trent
In an imaginative and enterprising initiative, Stoke-on-Trent is currently staging the first British Ceramic Biennial – an event taking place in all the six towns of the city. Using local and European funding, the BCB is intended to increase popular awareness of Stoke’s rich ceramic heritage at a time when many factories are closing and production moving overseas. The aim is also to play a part in the regeneration of the city by introducing other ways of approaching ceramics.
The popular perception of Stoke is of a smoky, dusty place with hundreds of kilns belching out sooty fumes. Today all that has changed. The famous bottle kilns have become redundant and many have been pulled down, although a few can be seen dotted around the cityscape. Many of the old factories have also become redundant and closed, but some have been cleverly appropriated by BCB to house exhibitions and related events, providing a strongly atmospheric setting for new work.
The Gladstone Museum, a site that has three bottle kilns which can be inspected, is a “working museum”. Pots are thrown, flowers modelled in bone china and visitors are invited to take part and test their own skills themselves. An exhibition of photographs of women who model the flowers, together with recordings of their comments, give an insight into the working of the industry. Stephen Dixon has built a clay battleship, six feet high, into which visitors can add a bone china flower, transforming it from object of war to one of peace.
Dixon also has work in the Potteries Museum, a gallery devoted to the history of ceramics. In an exhibition organised by the BCB, artists were invited to produce special pieces. Responding to the current controversy around MPs’ expenses, Dixon made casts of a pig’s head, each one labelled with the name of an MP and their outrageous expenses claim. In fairness, the MPs represent all the main political parties.
Other projects make inventive use of other spaces in the city. A redundant factory houses “Fresh”, work by recently graduated students, giving a taste of what might lie ahead. Another houses hundreds of hand-built pots from India. By contrast, several artists spent a week slithering and sliding in a clay pit, pushing and pulling the deep red earthenware clay, building forms, making lettering, all of which was destroyed by them or by the never ceasing rain. In a video we see them literally covered with clay, and appearing to relish the physical contact with the raw materials.
Outreach projects – “Guerrilla Tactics” – involved artists working with groups of children or adults. One took place in a local pub, with the participants producing rather wobbly ceramic beer mats. What they lacked in making skills was evidently made up for by the pleasure of handling clay. Another, led by CJ O’Neal, worked with teenagers to produce designs for plates.
The ambitious project brings a different life to the area, introducing new ideas and concepts many of which touch on, or make use of, industrial production. There are clear overlaps between the work of artists and industry – the BCB is an ideal nurturing ground for future developments. l
Emmanuel Cooper
British Ceramic Biennial continues until December 10. Full details from www.britishceramicsbiennial.com
