The Willow Pattern Project

Deptford X 2011

2011-11-29T18:06:00.001Z

It has been awhile since I posted here...

In July I put in a proposal to Deptford X 2011. The festival happened over two weekends at the end of September, and I didn't take part. Not being selected came as a relief since my design work had become very busy and I was also doing quite a bit of local campaigning (and still am)...and the idea I had was for another installation in the Creek that would have required a lot of work.

The "lead artist-curators" were (and still are) Hew Locke and Indra Khanna. Their brief was as follows...

Surrender to the pleasure of the decorative. Revel in the excessive, embrace it, be dazzled. A stall stacked with lurid artificial flowers, rhythmic serpentine graffiti, baroque mermen carved over the old town hall door, all equally a joy to the eye. Indulge yourself.

But there is more than just the surface. Layers of decoration contain levels of meaning, messages and codes. Symbols of power, conspicuous consumption, signals of elitist knowledge, patterns of control, signs of social belonging.

Is it all just too much? Visual overload, information overload, too much to digest – too much work, not enough time. Are our eyes bigger than our stomachs?

Here was my idea...It was not particularly decorative!

Deptford Creek forms the eastern boundary of the Deptford parliamentary seat presently occupied by Joan Ruddock MP. An imaginary dotted line runs through its middle.

The coalition government aims to reduce the number of MPs, and on September 6th 2011, boundary changes will be announced. The Deptford parliamentary seat is predicted to become Greenwich & Deptford.

I propose to draw the present boundary line in the Creek with an object often found in the Creek, that is, crockery. The plates would be white (or possibly coloured and patterned) and be placed every metre along the imaginary line. The line would be viewable from Laban, from the Ha'Penny Hatch, and from the carpark at Faircharm.

The line would also only be visible at low-tide, and invisible at high tide. Over the duration of the festival, the line will be distressed and displaced by the tidal water and become indistinct as the plates become covered in mud, and eventually disappear, much as the present political boundary is predicted to.

The Creek as a political boundary has become a symbol of power, signalling patterns of control, creating a specific sense of place (and social belonging) to those living either side of it, despite the bridges that cross it. Rivers have long divided cities and countries, but has this particular division been natural or artificial? The Creek's role may now change as it becomes the centre of a much larger area, and a hub of luxury development. Do we care about this gerrymandering? Will we notice the difference?

(click to enlarge)

Creekery #2: refraction

2011-08-19T16:01:00.001+01:00

Picture by Charles Shearer

Gaudi: July 2011: Casa Batlio

2011-08-19T15:55:00.002+01:00

Gaudi: July 2011: On the roof of the Pedrera

2011-08-19T15:37:00.001+01:00

Mark Wallinger: Folk Stones

2011-08-19T15:19:00.001+01:00

On permanent show at Folkestone is Mark Wallinger's 2008 Triennial offering Folk Stones. The precise number of beach pebbles collected and laid out into a massive square reveals a profound underpinning: 19,240 individually numbered stones stand for the exact number of British soldiers killed on 1st July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The work is inspired by the one million soldiers who left from Folkestone harbour to fight on the battlefields of France and Flanders.

Cornelia at Folkestone

2011-08-18T05:13:00.001+01:00

Let's Talk About the Rain

2011-08-12T20:20:00.002+01:00

Parlez-moi De La Pluie – a film by Agnes Jaoui (2008). On the telly the other night. Am pretty sure that's a Willow Pattern plate on the wall there...

Drawing on the beach

2011-06-30T00:24:00.002+01:00

Emma and Elisabeth were up at the South Bank this evening watching the Parkour...and saw this...

Made In Britain and China's PM visit

2011-06-27T23:37:00.001+01:00

Great programme with the lovely Evan Davis, looking at the British economy, and in particular what is going on in China. Of the mighty sale price of the iPhone, most goes to the retailer and pays for the components, then $85 goes to Apple, and $5 to the Chinese company who assembled it.
Pointless making a link to i-Player, but anyway...Made In Britain.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are in town for trades deals, shaking hands with Cameron and getting the old horse guards parade treatment.

PM signs China deals but urges respect for human rights (link here to BBC report)

"After meeting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao for talks, Mr Cameron hailed what he said was a 'deeper dialogue'. But he said political and economic progress must go hand in hand as respect for human rights was 'the best guarantor' of prosperity and stability.

"Mr Wen urged co-operation and dialogue over the issue, not 'finger-pointing'.

"During talks in Downing Street, the two leaders signed bilateral trade agreements worth £1.4bn and restated their desire to double the value of two-way trade between the countries by 2015...."

BBC News reported this without irony and seemed at a loss as to what Mr Wen might be inferring, what with their piling up of political prisoners such as Ai Wei Wei.

Could it be, ahem, the British treatment of the Chinese some 200 years ago or is more likely, ahem, our treatment of terror suspects? Or could it be, ahem, our government's enormous disregard for trades unions, and the voice of protest (the same voices so right about Iraq)? Pointing the finger indeed, Mr Cameron, as you close down education, libraries, the health service and the arts, and cut local authority grants to ribbons, for the sake of your banker mates.

In his speech about how different our countries and cultures were, Cameron failed to refer even briefly to our shared history – why, for fear of shaming the Chinese? Or because, when the Chinese have been bank rolling the Western world for ten years now and is about to become the No.1 economic power in the world, it is hugely embarrassing to speak of an once vain glorious, now inglorious past.

It's not in the school curriculum, that's for sure.

Lawes Chemical Co. at Harold Wharf

2011-06-26T03:28:00.002+01:00

Christopher Mazeika from the Shipwright's Palace contacted me on Facebook to tell me to bid for this ashtray on eBay. For around £7 inc p&p I resurrected my PayPal account to snap up this small representation of my family name in Deptford. I have lived here 30 years and had no idea.

It was admittedly very exciting to find that my namesake (as yet connection unproved) John B Lawes had a chemical works on the very site where I have just exhibited. It is in fact, TOO WEIRD.

John Bennet Lawes founded the chemical fertiliser industry in 1842, with the development of wet process phosphoric acid technology. He was a self taught agricultural chemist and early Victorian entrepreneur who patented a process whereby ground coprolite was mixed with sulphuric acid resulting in a more soluble form of calcium phosphate or "superphosphate".

Coprolite is fossilised animal dung and composed chiefly of calcium phosphate along with minor quantities of organic matter (it is possible to infer the diet of the animal which produced the coprolite on examination). Superphosphate production factories were rapidly built around the country, where coprolite could be extracted. It had been discovered in 1840 that crops grew more strongly where the coprolite existed, but the mineral was not insoluble in water so couldn't be used until Lawes found a way to make it work. Bone ash was also used and many industries around the creek were based on using the discarded body parts of cattle.

Lawes was the founder of fertiliser (although wikipedia has some bloke called the Rev John Stevens Henslow as the one to patent the extraction process, so some more research is required!).

Lawes' first chemical works straddled the south of the present Faircharm site and the north of APT's site. This predates the present APT building.

I saw a map today at a consultation exhibition by Thames Tunnel (Thames Water) at Creekside Centre which showed the chemical works, but I've yet to track this map down. Rather ironic that Lawes made a fortune out of fossilised shit, and now I'm living in Shit Central, this area being one of the largest concentrations of sewage confluence...resulting in one of the few areas on the Thames discharging effluent into the Thames during heavy rain. The overflow is next door to the Ahoy Centre, where I have mudlarked on many an occasion and where some of my pottery fragments have been found.

At the Thames Tunnel consultation today I learned that the tunnel will merely be an overflow pipe, and not as I thought, a giant tunnel of shit channeling all out to sea. On the contrary.

After Creekery I thought my name would be associated with mud (my name is mud), but now it appears it is historically associated with shit. On my doorstep.

Clare Twomey

2011-06-25T21:27:00.003+01:00

Just thinking about Clare Twomey's 2003 work Consciousness/Conscience...

"Consciousness/Conscience is a ceramic installation that is destroyed; it is made from one of the most precious and revered materials, Bone China. 7000 hollow cast bone china tiles is a lot of making for an individual crafts person. To maintain a constant form without deviation would be taxing for the individual maker. None of the above is impossible, just not logical for this project."

"The breaking of China is usually a moment for regret, and in the case of a much-used and well-loved domestic item one of great sadness. Twomey though, is excited by the ephemeral nature of her material and takes pleasure in its fragility, giving the breaking of it the same exhilarating possibilities encountered on walking over virgin snow." (Mark Currah)

But it's the footprint element of the work I'm interested in, and I go back to Creekery to look at the footprints we made that were such a problem at the time since they disrupted the smooth green carpet that made such a great canvas for the plates. APT sculptor Victoria Rance had said when I was worrying about it, "I quite like the footprints and the patterns they make..."

I bleached out some photos of the installation process to find the footprints. But these are just reminiscent of the photos I took at Christmas in my mother's garden, where foxes, magpies, blackbirds and robins made their patterns...

Anyway, Clare Twomey is awesome. Here's a pic from Trophy, a 2006 installation at the V&A.

Apple exploits Chinese workers

2011-06-25T20:20:00.000+01:00

In the ongoing dialogue of Western trade with China that is a pertinent theme in this project, this surely has to be the story that is closest to home, what with me being a Mac user since 1984:

"An investigation into the conditions of Chinese workers has revealed the shocking human cost of producing the must-have Apple iPhones and iPads that are now ubiquitous in the west.

"The research, carried out by two NGOs, has revealed disturbing allegations of excessive working hours and draconian workplace rules at two major plants in southern China. It has also uncovered an "anti-suicide" pledge that workers at the two plants have been urged to sign, after a series of employee deaths last year..."

See more of this Guardian story here.

Half a million Chinese workers are paid about 65p an hour in a 60-hour week to cope with demand for Apple products.

Creekery the movie

2011-06-25T20:03:00.000+01:00

Creekery #2 at Creekside Open 2011 from Sue Lawes on Vimeo.

Creekery at RSVPLondon

2011-06-25T19:45:00.005+01:00

On Friday 17th June, Studio Raw took over a ground floor unit at Faircharm to stage RSVPLondon. One of the main exhibitors were Karakusevic Carson Architects who have been commissioned by Work Space to completely redesign the Faircharm Trading Estate, or as the blurb said, "to create new purpose built studios, gallery spaces, workshops, and a new residential, live-work space". Quite controversial for all the businesses and studios presentedly housed in Faircharm, and also for Crossfields Estate residents opposite (of which I am one).

I hung two photos by Charles Shearer of last year's Creekery at Deptford X 2010 and a spanking new print of Creekery #2, also taken by Charles. I also showed my little movie looped on my laptop. I was very proud to share a space with Boro, who up-cycle furniture and fashion items (gorgeous chairs here), and the rather famous Charming Baker, aka Alan, a painter and illustrator who has achieved dizzying heights of success over the past year. Other exhibitors included Hive, Union Cycle Works, JAILmake and Based Upon.

The exhibition continued on Saturday. Meanwhile, there was lots going on in Faircharm that weekend – Core Gallery, open studios at Creekside Artists and Cor Blimey Arts, and the Faircharm Fair. Also in Creekside, Cockpit Arts were open, plus ArtHub open studios and Creekside Open Part Two at APT.

At the Faircharm Fair, artists from Creekside Artists were showing among the craft artists, and I liked Paul Coombs' work in particular. It reminded me of Yee Sookyung's broken pots stuck back together again, only these little pieces refer to the human form, being broken statuettes or nick nacks.

Emathion Paul Coombs, 2010 Broken ceramic

Devastation

2011-06-25T18:15:00.003+01:00

Creekside Open finished on 29th May. I was allowed to keep the plates in so that I could finish my documentation. However it rained solidly for several days afterwards. On 7th June it stopped and I went to view the damage. A number of dishes that had been in the water had been swept away down the Creek as far as the Ha'Penny Hatch, whilst the plates in the mud bank had fallen over. Some of the waterbound plates had become detached from the bricks that had been weighting them down, so had to be repaired.

For the medium format film photography and the time lapse movie I had planned, the whole lot had to be washed and re-installed. The whole thing was also to be removed by Saturday 11th before the private view of the second exhibition in Creekside Open. So I had three days to conquer the technicalities of time lapse photography and get Charles Shearer down with his film camera.

It turned out that the advice I had been given by Mo Hague was completely wrong for my project and the equipment I had available to me. I now had lots of batteries for my Panasonic and an intervalometer, a remote control device to set the camera to take shots at specific intervals, that fitted my FZ30.

On Thursday and Friday I finally succeeded in getting some footage, even though the weather was completely unreliable. It was so bad that I was unable to leave the camera to do its thing and had to stand in the wind and rain making sure the umbrella I'd attached to a pole next to the tripod to keep rain off the camera didn't fly off. I also managed to drop my pocket Lumix into the water and had to rescue it before the tide took it away (miraculously it dried out in front of the Rhino heater in the studio over the next five days and came back to life).

On Saturday 11th June Emma came to help clear the plates out. We also filmed that. See next post for the Creekery movie which I put together in iMovie the following week in order to show at the RSVP exhibition on 17th June.

Elevation

2011-06-25T17:24:00.001+01:00

Mali Morris has a studio on the top floor at APT. Her view of Creekery was even more elevated than the one from the wharf wall. She kindly furnished me with a CD of photographs she'd taken from her french windows.

Creekery #2 on The Culture Show tonight

2011-06-02T17:49:00.003+01:00

Mild excitement since I've been informed that the filming done by BBC2's Culture Show team last Friday is going to include a few seconds of Creekery #2 and it's being screened tonight.

(See it on BBC iPlayer here, and fast forward 20 minutes...)

The weather was truly awful last Wednesday and Thursday (though very good news for farmers and gardeners). It pretty much wrecked the installation, quickly covering it in mud, knocking a few plates over and carrying one or two downstream. Friday was more clement so I got down into the creek and washed them all again. It was beginning to feel like a performance piece with the old woman doing the washing up in the river...

Just as I'd finished practically totally reinstalling the piece and was coming up the ladder at around 5pm, the BBC film crew emerged outside from the gallery. Fortunately they didn't want to speak to me. They also filmed Charlotte Warne Thomas's gold leaf portaloo which was situated outside, and filmed in the gallery so they'll be featuring a couple more works housed indoors. There will probably be interviews and more action coming from Bear Space, The Old Police Station and The Agency, where they filmed later on.

Meanwhile, my buyer pulled out, but may still be interested in a photograph. Getting a large format photograph is now posing a challenge because the lowtides are at awkward times of the day this week and next.

I've also been getting helpful advice from time lapse photographer Mo Hague who is a friend of my potential buyer. The work continues...

Fortunately, I am being allowed to keep the piece in the Creek a bit longer so that we can do this documentation, even though the show finished last Sunday.

Creekery #2 at Creekside Open: Day 18

2011-05-25T12:23:00.004+01:00

Creekery #2 has now been in the Creek for eighteen days and has been open to public viewing for 8 of those. There are another 4 days to go before Creekside Open closes (May 29th).

A young collector has expressed an interest in buying the installation, but it has been very hard to arrive at a realistic price. I have taken advice from gallerist Bea de Souza (The Agency) who has made some helpful suggestions on how to present the work for the buyer that is of museum standards. A fantastic photograph of the piece is an important part of this.

Charles Shearer took some photos in the first week, and is coming again today. But here are four from his first proofings...

I have also spent some considerable time trying to make a time lapse movie of the tide going out to reveal the plates, so far without success...

The installation has been cleaned by hand three or four times since going in – after three or four days silt builds up on the plates and begins to obscure the pattern, damping down the contrast of the blue with the green. It is very tempting to leave them to become covered in mud. If I had not cleaned them, they would be white/off-grey by now with no pattern visible at all.

The problem with going in to wipe the plates clean is that muddy black footprints are left behind. After one tide, the deep footprints fill with water and soften so that after the next tide, they show up as dimples in the green carpet. Creekside Open's co-ordinator was keen to have a less dimpled mudbank and sparkling plates for when The Culture Show visit on Friday for SLAM (South London Art Map Last Fridays). On the off chance Creekery #2 might be filmed, yesterday I purchased a 30 metre garden hose and attempted to hose the plates down without leaving any footprints, but the jet wasn't strong enough to disperse the ingrained silt.

Perhaps that is Creekery #3 – the plates and Creek left to their own devices, as was inferred in my original text...

Fragments

2011-05-21T17:53:00.001+01:00

Highly accomplished watercolourist Jonathan Pike came by the show today and told me he'd recently been painting pottery shards and had found much of his pieces on the Kent coast in places such as Halstow (where I have mudlarked too). He sent me these pix...

www.jonathanpike.co.uk

Creekery #2 Installation: Day 4 : Wednesday 11 May

2011-05-13T20:57:00.006+01:00

Charles comes to take photographs, but the weather's a bit iffy. Emma has come to help clean the plates. They have become fairly dirty over three days. However if we go down and clean them Charles will have our footprints in his pictures, so he goes down and takes some pix before we begin cleaning...

On Monday I had hung a large print in the hut. It's a blow-up of Charles's photograph of the autumn 2010 Ha'Penny Hatch installation. The Creekside co-ordinator Liz May had asked me for a print of the photo submitted and chosen by Dexter Dalwood. I got two pics blown up, not sure which was best. Liz's idea was that people who come to the show when the tide is fully in can see what it might look like when the tide is out. The new installation looks quite different from the photo, not just because it's a different location but because the mud is much, much greener at this time of year.

I'm not sure what to do about the objects already in the hut – for instance, a large plaster head of Marilyn Munroe...

A koot takes a walk through the plate garden...

When Charles has left, Emma and I take a walk up the Creek. Coming back I get another perspective...

...and sunny side up...

Emma and I were just in time to grab a panini from Creekside Cafe before it closed at 4pm, and we ended the day in my studio exploring the possibilities of making a time lapse film of the tide coming in and going out...Webcam? SLR with Timer Remote Control? i-Sight on a laptop with Gawker? We were quite tickled by Pet Cam...

Creekery #2 installation

2011-05-10T13:29:00.008+01:00

Day One - Saturday 7th May

Rain was forecast, with low-tide at 10.45am, so we used this day to transport the crocks over to the APT yard and store them and equipment (waders, sticks, basket, rope) in the little hut situated on the riverwall of the APT yard. Typically, the forecast was misleading, and Saturday turned into a beautiful day.

Ten days ago, I went on a Creekside Walk and put in five plates as a test. Over this period, which had been very dry and often sunny, silt had built up on the plates and almost totally obscured the blue pattern. The mud had dried almost white like china clay.

Day Two - Sunday 8th May

Emma was a theatre carpenter in a previous life with lots of experience backstage up in the flys, and fully used to heights and steep Jacob ladders. She's first down into the Creek, ready to receive the materials...

End of Day Two...tide coming in fast at 2.15pm, some tweaking to do tomorrow...

Day Three - Monday 9th May

Low-tide is 11.45. Lisa is helping today. She says low-tide is 12.45. An experienced Thames mudlarker (and an archaeologist in a previous life) she reads the tides at London Bridge, not Woolwich as I have been taught. I have a few more pieces to add to the installation which must be fetched over from my studio. At 12.45, Lisa's on rope duty...

Today, APT is hanging the show in the gallery with the selector Dexter Dalwood. Meanwhile, down the road, Creekside Centre is holding a launch to announce its sponsorship from Thames Water and its new name, Creekside Discovery Centre. There's lots going on, including a school's walk in the Creek. At 1.15pm, we are invaded by around 30 kids and three or four teachers, led by Nick Bertrand.

Nick refers to Lisa and myself as the River People and asks me to tell the kids what I'm doing. I fail to keep their attention as I struggle to describe the project. I try to tell them how dinner plates are just mud that's been heated in a hot fire (not totally accurate!), how the project started when I found all the bits of pottery in the water, how the plate design is 220 years old and people used to throw their rubbish in the river then....I even lose the teacher's interest, but that is probably because they are more concerned with policing the children who are extremely over excited. I think I might have just shown the kids that the picture on the plate shows a Creek and a bridge and birds and trees and leave it at that.

Lisa stands guard at the onslaught of nine year olds...

I am watching the shadow being created by the DLR flyover. Charles Shearer is going to come down and take some photographs later in the week and I'm keen to know at what time this shadow moves.
Back up on the wharf, I survey what more needs to be done...

Around 2.30pm Lisa leaves, and I go back down to tweak a little more before the tide comes in. I'm accompanied by a pair of ducks...I find out later from Nick that these are Egyptian Geese – and although they have been seen in other parts of London, this is the FIRST EVER sighting of these geese in the Creek.

At 2.45, back on dry land, the tide is coming in fast, and the shadow has cleared the plates...

At 3.15pm, the tide has crept up the mudbanks and the shadow has gone...If Charles comes on Wednesday, low-tide will be around 1.45pm. If he comes on Thursday, low-tide will be 3pm, which will also be good for a shot of the entire installation with no shadows...depends on whether it's sunny or not of course.

Creekside Open 2011

2011-05-06T20:20:00.009+01:00

I have been chosen to take part in the first half of Creekside Open 2011, selected by Dexter Dalwood. I will be installing Creekery at Harold Wharf, the area of the Creek which APT Studios and Gallery back onto. Here is the bare canvas...

The mudbank is completely different here to how it was at Ha'Penny Hatch back in September/October 2010 during Deptford X. It is shallower near the centre and much, much deeper next to the walls. The access at Ha'Penny Hatch was via the gentle slope of the Creekside Centre, but at this point in the Creek, a few hundred yards upstream, it is via a tall ladder from the wall of the wharf.

Work starts this weekend and Emma will be lending her invaluable assistance again. The crockery will have to be lowered by rope and basket from the APT yard down to the creek, before it can be 'planted'...

The show opens next Thursday with the Private View on Saturday 14th May, 3-6pm. As last time, it will only be visible at low-tide, and then again, only when the gallery is open (Thursday – Sunday, 12-5pm). Of course, either side of the low-tide times can be more interesting...as the piece is revealed or disappears...It will not be viewable from the luxury flats opposite APT.

CREEKERY #2 approximate low-tide viewing times:

Thursday 12 May     1–5pm
Friday 13 May     2.30–5pm
Saturday 14 May     3.30–5pm
Sunday 15 May     4.45 –5pm

Thursday 19 May     1.45–5pm
Friday 20 May     12.15– 4.15pm
Saturday 21 May     12noon –1pm
Sunday 22 May     12noon–1.30pm

Thursday 26 May     12.45– 4.45pm
Friday 27 May     2–6pm
Saturday 28 May    3.15–5pm
Sunday 29 May    4.15–5pm

CREEKSIDE LOW-TIDE WALKS

As last year, there is the opportunity for people to get close to the installation by taking a walk in the Creek. Meet at Creekside Centre, 14 Creekside SE8 4SA.
Participants need to be reasonably fit since you will be walking on the bed of a wild river. Waders, waterproofs and walking sticks are provided.

Monday 16 May, 6–8pm
Part of the Rivers & People Project. This event is FREE and open to children and adults alike. No booking required, just turn up on the day. www.natureconservationlewisham.co.uk

Sunday 22 May, 11am–1pm &
Saturday 28 May, 3.30–5.30pm
Organised by Creekside Education Trust. Adults: £10, Children & concessions £8.50, Family ticket (2 adults, 2 children) £28.
Booking is essential (by email): creeksidecentre@yahoo.co.uk
www.creeksidecentre.org.uk

More info: www.creeksideopen.org

Shards

2011-04-26T21:28:00.001+01:00

Shards 2011. c. Sue Lawes Oil on canvas. 100cm x 100cm

Oil painting takes too long.

Ai Weiwei 'disappeared'...

2011-04-08T22:09:00.004+01:00

Actually Ai Weiwei was arrested on his way to Hong Kong and hasn't been seen since.

www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/apr/08/our-fears-fate-ai-weiwei

The above plea signed by various British arts representatives refers to a previous report in The Guardian:

"Chinese police are investigating outspoken artist Ai Weiwei for "suspected economic crimes", the state news agency, Xinhua, has announced. Authorities had not previously acknowledged police action against the 53-year-old, who went missing on Sunday after being stopped by officials at Beijing airport.

The single-sentence report, deleted shortly after it appeared, did not explicitly refer to his detention, and there was no word on his friend Wen Tao, 38, who has also been unreachable since his reported detention on the same day.

"Earlier, outgoing US ambassador Jon Huntsman had raised the artist's case in a strongly worded speech in Shanghai, describing him as one of the activists who "challenge the Chinese government to serve the public in all cases and at all times".

"The artist's detention has sparked an international outcry, with the US, Britain and the European Union criticising a crackdown on dissidents and activists. Germany's foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, has summoned the Chinese ambassador over the issue.

"Police visited Ai's studio three times in the week before he went missing. "He felt a premonition that he would be detained," his wife Lu Qing told AP. "He told me something might happen to him."
She said she was particularly worried about his health as he takes medication for several illnesses.
While Ai had repeatedly clashed with authorities, friends had already warned that this case appeared more serious because police had removed dozens of computers and documents from his studio and had questioned his assistants.

"Earlier in the day, Ai's mother, Gao Ying, told Reuters: "I think they detained him for a reason. If they think they have something, it's certainly a fixed case, an injustice. I think they'll concoct some things against him."

"Gao said she had been "filled with a bit of dread" since Ai angered authorities by listing the names of children who died when schools collapsed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Officials censored discussion of the subject after public anger developed over shoddy construction.

"On the Sina microblog, China's domestic equivalent of Twitter, censors deleted many messages about Ai, and a search for his name produced a warning that results were not shown due to local regulations. But internet users fought back with typical ingenuity. Several used the words "ai weilai" or "love the future" – which looks and sounds similar to his name – to call for his return. One wrote: "I really don't dare believe that in this society, even love for the future can disappear." "

Meekyoung Shin at Haunch of Venison

2011-03-08T21:43:00.003Z

And so to Piccadilly, with Lisa, to see Meekyoung Shin's pots made of soap.

Haunch of Venison London is exhibiting "a significant number of installations" by the Korean artist, in which "virtuoso facsimiles of Chinese porcelain and Western classical sculpture are reinterpreted in soap."

"In Translation Vases (2009), Shin reproduces several pieces of highly collectable porcelain – produced in China since the 16th century for consumption in the West – translating the form directly from the original. By rendering these precious objects in a seemingly fragile and transient material such as soap, Shin questions the authority and originality the original vases demand. Presenting new vases on the packing crates in which they are shipped from location to location further emphasises the sense of dislocation and transformation."

Also showing is Ghost Series, "a landscape of more than 200 translucent vessels resembling coloured glass". This "further evolves the notion of transience of the original by stripping the forms of both their perceived solidity and their decorative markings, leaving only an echo of the original form."

Also showing are earlier works where Shin has reworked classical Western sculpture in soap. In Aphrodite below, the figure has been exposed to the weathering of the elements, "disintegration mirroring that suffered over time by ancient sculpture created in seemingly more durable materials."

I particularly like this collapsed pot...

Also showing was German artist Susanne Kuhn. Wasn't so keen, except for this detail in the much larger "Green: The Arnolfinis" (2011) Acrylic on canvas.

...and Swiss artist Uwe Wittwer, which I mostly liked...

Uwe Wittwer, Still life negative after Melendez, oil on canvas

Uwe Wittwer, Interior, oil on canvas

The Haunch of Venison also has a bookshop in which is hung a fabulous lighting installation by Stuart Haygarth. Haygarth exhibited here in February 2010 with a show called Found, which showcased his ongoing relationship with arbitrary and abandoned objects. More of his work here.

Lisa and I were of course delighted with this, being inveterate mudlarkers who come across a lot of abandoned objects.

All three shows run till 2 April 2011. For more information go to Haunch of Venison website.
Text above quoted from accompanying material from exhibition.

-o-

From Piccadilly to the South Bank...and the Hayward for British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet, running until 17 April. Perhaps we were tired, but we didn't enjoy much of it, despite the great reviews. See the website here.

However, we very much enjoyed Christian Marclay's The Clock (which would appeal to anyone) and I liked the Sarah Lucas pieces...We are also fond of Roger Hiorns for his South London council flat installation where every surface was invaded by the crystallisation of copper sulphate, but not particularly for the piece he shows here. This piece is the main promotional image of BAS7, a naked man perching on a park bench looking at a flame. Many people will miss it since it only occurs at unspecified intervals. Most of the time, they will just see the bench, cordoned off. I crept out of yet another boring film, leaving Lisa determined to watch "at least one film all the way through", and came upon the live installation complete with naked boy and flame. Photography is totally verboten in the Hayward (unlike Haunch of Venison where they probably realise any publicity is good publicity), but I thought I would get a quick snap of naked boy and flame since it is such a transitory experience. Immediately I was pounced upon by a Hayward steward who asked me to delete the picture. I was so shocked by this, I actually couldn't remember how to delete a picture (the camera is pretty new and I'm still finding my way round it). In the end the woman, who I wouldn't be surprised to see in Prisoner Cell Block H, decided she couldn't wait for me to stop fumbling about since she might miss the opportunity to stop someone else.

Great minds think alike

2011-03-08T19:30:00.001Z

Another Christmas present, this time from Emma Redstone...measuring 75mm diameter, a little bigger than Lisa's present (see previous post). Have only just got round to taking the photograph. It is Coalport Bone China, made in England.

Doll's House Willow

2010-12-24T17:27:00.000Z

A wee Christmas present from my friend Lisa Larsson...a set of dinner plates (about 2cm diameter) and serving dishes for a doll's house. Thanks, Lisa! Happy Christmas!

Double take in Peckham Space

2010-12-14T21:24:00.000Z

I was driving over to a friend in Peckham last Friday and was stuck at the lights at the top of Rye Lane when something caught my eye on the right. A new gallery (well, new to me) has popped up besides the entrance to the library/Peckham Pulse and in the window I could see a blue & white round thing, most likely a plate, possibly some sort of Willow pattern....

I continued on to meet my friend, then on the way back I stopped to find out. The gallery is Peckham Space, apparently a Camberwell School of Art project in association with Southwark Council. The show was a Christmas show with works from local artists, all at around £50. One or two pieces were rather good, most of it was a bit crap like any 'open submission' show is. The item that had caught my attention all the way from the road turned out to be a bit of a surprise.

It was a biro drawing on a polystyrene plate about nine inches diameter in the Willow stylee depicting the space outside the Peckham Library. The artist is Jayne Lloyd. Can't find out much about her so far. Might eventually get round to emailing her at the address given on the label that was stuck next to the piece.

Christmas Show at Creekside

2010-12-04T20:39:00.004Z

I'm selling giclée prints of Creekside Willow With Vultures at Art Hub's Christmas show.

Royal Doulton's Willow & Aster

2010-12-04T20:26:00.000Z

My sister found this extraordinary piece for me for my birthday.

Ai Weiwei - Without Fear or Favour

2010-11-17T00:50:00.001Z

Just watched Imagine... on BBC1 – "Alan Yentob reveals how this most courageous and determined of artists continues to fight for artistic freedom of expression while living under the restrictive shadows of authoritarian rule."

It was a good show. Covered a few things I didn't already know...Afterwards, they set up a Live Chat with Ai Weiwei on the Imagine page of the beeb online. This is pretty similar to what you can do at the Tate – well, really, it's the only thing you can do at the Tate now we can no longer walk on the sunflower seeds...

One of the comments was "How do you feel that the Tate stopped letting people be with the sunflower seeds 'for health and safety reasons'?" and Ai Weiwei said "The Tate and I are still trying to find a way to make it possible for everyone to enjoy the work."

I posted a few comments but they didn't come up and didn't get answered. I got a bit political...
"Were you aware that when you showed your work at the Albion Gallery in Battersea in a brand new Norman Foster building, that Foster had spent years trying to get rid of an artist who lives and works on a barge moored on the riverfront of the building?" *
When that didn't get answered I posted, "Help me Ai Weiwei, the BBC are censoring me!"

* see my original post on Nasty Norman here

Mudlarking in 1948

2010-11-13T23:16:00.001Z

BEACHCOMBERS

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Thanks to Lisa Larsson for this link. Apologies for the Microsoft advert.

Ai Weiwei under 'house arrest'

2010-11-07T03:12:00.000Z

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11704669

Fry's delights

2010-10-24T18:41:00.000+01:00

Have finally got round to reading Stephen Fry's autobiography Moab Is My Washpot, just as Radio 4 start serialising his second. On page 48, he is remembering his anguish at never winning a star for bringing into his primary school something for the Nature Table.

"Grim weeks of effort and nature-trailing followed. I tried a starfish, a thrush egg, a collection of pressed campions and harebells and a boxful of shards of that willow pattern ironstone china that the Victorians buried in the earth for the sole purpose of disappointing twentieth-century treasure seekers..."

Another unidentified object

2010-10-19T20:14:00.002+01:00

Ok, this isn't Willow. But it was part of hoard collected in my last Creek dip.

The back has part of a maker's mark: a little bird, some flowers, the word Chevrot(i?), and the initials J.M&.....
Have so far failed to identify the pattern and maker, but think the pattern might have been called Chevrotain, which is a small deer like the one pictured, sometimes called the mouse deer, varieties of species found in India, Malaya and West Africa...

Bakelite Willow

2010-10-19T19:41:00.003+01:00

Emma collects Bakelite. She recently dug this butter dish out from her collection to show me...She said she hadn't been able to find any reference to such a marriage of Bakelite and Willow Pattern anywhere...

The nearest reference I have found is this "Blue and white china butter dish by George Jones, Staffordshire, made especially with Art Deco oak holder with silver plated rim and silver plated butter knife. 1920s."
Not Bakelite, then.

Ai Weiwei's Tate show closes to public

2010-10-19T18:46:00.000+01:00

Unfortunately I was too late to walk over Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds. I didn't get there till Sunday, the news having broken on Thursday that the Tate had decided to ban people from walking through the work, due to the Health & Safety risks incurred by the porcelain dust created from so many people visiting the show.

I suspect most people would be more than happy to wear a mask and even pay for it, so I'm inclined to think the closure is more to do with the amount of thieving going on...

I don't mind too much. The idea is mind blowing enough on its own.

Jonathan Jones writes in The Guardian here: "There is more to art than interaction, after all. Personally I quite like just looking at stuff. The imperative to slide down slides or lie on the floor to see yourself in a reflective ceiling has always seemed to me a distracting eccentricity of the Turbine Hall installations. The reason Ai Weiwei's work is among the very best of them is because he wants to make us think – about the individual in the crowd, the ocean of humanity, the incalculable numbers of people on this earth – and their fragility underfoot. That last point is obviously weakened when you can't get close.

"Surely this might have been foreseen? And is there a solution? Porcelain is fragile. Maybe visitors could simply be requested to remove their shoes? Perhaps in future the Tate should get the site-specific art experts Artangel to help with these commissions. Artangel have organised events involving toxic substances that passed health and safety. Anyway, this remains a serious and imposing work of art. Why not contemplate it like a philosopher standing on the shore imagining the immensity of the grey sea?"

The photo above by Tim Ireland accompanies a Guardian report by Mark Brown here.

A History of the World in 100 Objects

2010-10-12T17:16:00.004+01:00

This BBC Radio 4 series is finally coming to an end. And NUMBER 92 on the list (today) is a TEA SET!
I've been waiting for tea and teapots to come up for the last (and sometimes rather dreary) 91 episodes...and I'm really chuffed that my own research is validated by the British Museum's choice...although there would've been even more to say if they'd used the Willow Pattern, but perhaps they thought it a bit tacky...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/v71qr/

This week's theme is Mass Production, Mass Persuasion (1780–1914)

Here's the transcript from the History of the World BBC website...

What could be more domestic, more unremarkable, more 'British', than a nice cup of tea? But you could ask that question the other way round and ask what could be 'less' British than a cup of tea, given that tea is made from plants grown in India, China or Africa, and is usually sweetened by sugar from the Caribbean. It's one of the extraordinary ironies of British national identity –- or perhaps it says everything about our national identity – that the drink that has become the worldwide caricature of Britishness has nothing indigenous about it, but is the result of centuries of global trade and a complex imperial history. Behind the modern British cup of tea lie the high politics of Victorian Britain. The story of nineteenth-century empire, of mass production and mass consumption, the taming of a turbulent and drunken industrial working class, the re-shaping of agriculture across continents, the movement of millions of people . . . and a world-wide shipping industry. It's a lot to think about as you tuck into the cucumber sandwiches at the vicarage.

"It takes one into the heart of the Victorian parlour. You have this superficial gloss of politeness and sobriety, but underneath you have this absolutely cut-throat imperial economic agenda." (Celina Fox)

This week we're looking at the global economy in the nineteenth century, at mass production and mass consumption, when all over the industrialised world luxuries became commonplace – clothes and clocks, pepper and porcelain – and some luxuries came to be seen as not only desirable but essential. In Britain, the most ubiquitous of all these former luxuries was tea.

Today's object is the tea set that I've got in front of me now – three pieces of brownish-red pottery. A smallish teapot with a short straight spout, a milk jug and a sugar bowl – the trinity of afternoon tea. They were made – as we can read on their bases – at Wedgwood's Etruria factory in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, in the heart of the Potteries. In the eighteenth century Wedgwood had made some of the most expensive ceramics in Britain, but this earthenware tea set shows that by the 1840s, when Wedgwood produced it, the company was aiming at a much wider market. This is quite clearly a mid-range tea set, of a sort that many quite modest British households were now able to afford. But this had not been the case for long.

Among the upper classes, tea had been popular since before 1700. It received celebrity endorsement first from Charles II's queen, Catherine of Braganza, and then again from Queen Anne. It came from China, it was expensive and it was refreshingly bitter, drunk in tiny cups without milk or sugar. People kept their tea in locked tea caddies as if it were a drug, and for those who could afford it, it often was. In the 1750s Samuel Johnson confessed himself a happy addict:

". . . a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has for 20 years diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant, whose kettle scarcely has time to cool, who with Tea amuses the evening, with Tea solaces the midnights, and with Tea welcomes the morning." ('The Literary Magazine')

Desire for the drink increased steadily in the eighteenth century. At some point early in the century people had started adding milk and sugar, transforming bitter refinement into sustaining sweetness. Consumption rocketed - tea supplies surged to meet the nation's growing appetite, and prices fell. Unlike coffee, which was seen as a masculine drink, with heavy overtones of all lads together, tea was specifically marketed as a respectable drink suitable for both sexes – and women were particularly targeted. Tea houses and tea gardens flourished in London, china tea sets became an essential part of a fashionable household, and less costly versions in pottery spread throughout society.

There's one more point that needs to be made about our tea set. Although it's made of simple earthenware, it's been given something extra, because all three pieces have been decorated with lacy open-work silver, cut out by hand. This is not for a modest middle-class household – this is a tea set with serious aspirations. It's not just going to keep up with the Jones's, it's going to leave them far behind.

As the eighteenth century went on, and tea got cheaper, the taste for it spread rapidly to the working classes. In 1809 a startled Swedish visitor to Britain noted:

"Next to water, tea is the Englishman's proper element. All classes consume it. In the morning one may see in many places small tables set up under the open sky, around which coal-carters and workmen empty their cups of delicious beverage."

By 1900 every person in Britain was, on average, getting through a staggering three kilos of tea a year. The ruling classes had an interest in promoting tea-drinking among the industrial urban population, who were poor, vulnerable to disease, and thought to be given to disorderly drunkenness. Beer, port and gin had all become a significant part of the diet of men, women and even children, largely because alcohol as a mild antiseptic was much safer to drink than the unpurified city water. Religious leaders and temperance movements joined together to proclaim the merits of tea. A cup of sweet, milky tea made with boiled water was healthy, cheap, energy-giving - and it didn't make you drunk. So in that way it was also a powerful instrument of social control. Here's historian Celina Fox:

"Temperance was huge. Drink and the Victorians was a very big issue. The desire to have a working population that was sober and industrious was very, very strong, and there was a great deal of propaganda to that effect. It was tied in with dissent, Methodism and so on . . . sobriety . . . and tea really was the drink of choice. And on top of that you have got the ritual of afternoon tea, because by this time dinner had become so late - 7.30, 8 o'clock – it was quite a bit of a gap for the British tummy between lunchtime and evening. So again, there is a revival of tea drinking as a sort of meal – for sandwiches and so forth – round about 4 o'clock. So really tea drinking takes off in a massive way in the nineteenth century."

In a remarkable re-branding of the British character, boisterous, rowdy beer was ousted as the defining national drink, and replaced by polite, respectable tea. Songs and poems celebrated tea's triumph over the demon drink:

"With you I see, in ages yet unborn,  Thy votaries the British Isles adorn,  Till rosy Bacchus shall his wreaths resign,  And love and tea triumph o'er the vine."

But our loving, tranquil cup of tea has a violent hinterland. To buy tea from the Chinese, British traders brought huge quantities of opium into the country, a practice that led to the two Opium Wars between Britain and China. We refer to these as the Opium Wars, but in fact they were just as much about tea. And the first Opium War broke out more-or-less at the same time as our teapot was leaving the Wedgwood factory.

Traders began looking for other sources, and in the 1830s the British set up tea plantations around Calcutta. In order to encourage demand, tea from British India was exempted from import duty, and strong, dark Assam tea became the patriotic national "cuppa". As the century went on, further tea plantations were established in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, and large numbers of Tamils moved from South India to Ceylon to work on them. The physical geography and the populations of both India and Sri Lanka were re-shaped by the insatiable British thirst for tea. Here's Monique Simmonds from Kew Gardens:

"You would have had hundreds of acres being turned over to tea, especially in India. They also had success when they took it to places like Ceylon. It would have had an impact on local populations, but it also did bring jobs to the area – although low-paid jobs – and started off with males being employed. But then it was mostly females who would be clipping the tea. Local communities in parts of India and China were benefiting from growing the material, and also being able to sell it. But the added value from the trade would have really occurred within the Empire, and especially within Britain."

If there was big money in growing tea, fortunes were also made in shipping it. The tea trade required huge numbers of large fast clippers, and when they docked in British harbours they met cargo vessels coming from the other side of the world, bringing sugar from the Caribbean.

Getting sugar on to the British tea table had, until recently, also had a darker side. The first African slaves in the Americas worked on sugar plantations, the start of the long and terrible triangular trade that carried European goods to Africa, African slaves to the Americas, and slave-produced sugar to Europe. After a long campaign, which involved many of the same people who supported temperance movements, slavery in the British West Indies had been abolished in 1830. But there was still a great deal of slave sugar around – Cuba was a massive producer - and it was of course cheaper than the sugar produced on free plantations. In the 1840s, the ethics of sugar were hot politics.

The most peaceful part of our tea set is of course the milk jug. But it too is part of a huge social and economic transformation. Until the 1830s, for urban-dwellers to have milk, cows had to live in the city – it's an aspect of nineteenth-century life we're barely aware of now. But suburban railways changed all that. Thanks to them, the cows could leave town.

"A new trade has been opened in Surrey since the completion of the South-Western Railway. Several dairies of 20 to 30 cows are kept, and the milk is sent to the various stations of the South-Western Railway, and conveyed to the Waterloo terminus for the supply of the London Market."

Our tea set is in fact a three-piece social history of nineteenth-century Britain. And it's a lens through which we can look at a large part of the history of the world. Here's historian Linda Colley:

"I think the other striking thing for me is, of course, it does underline how much empire – consciously or not – impacts on everybody eventually in this country. If, in the nineteenth century, you are sitting at a mahogany table, drinking tea with sugar, you are linked to virtually every continent on the globe. You are linked with the Royal Navy, which is guarding the sea routes between these continents. You are linked with this great tentacular capital machinery, through which the British control so many parts of the world and ransack them for commodities."

In the next programme we will be in another tea-drinking island nation, but one that – quite unlike Britain – had done all it could to keep itself separate from the rest of the world. Yet the image that I shall be looking at is now known all over the world . . . we'll be in Japan, with a print of Hokusai's 'Great Wave'.

Further notes from the website:

This tea set was made by the famous Staffordshire pottery firm founded by Josiah Wedgwood. It is made of red stoneware, which came to Europe from China via Holland in the 1600s, and can withstand hot water. Tea was initially a luxury product but by 1830 it was increasingly drunk by everyone in Britain using mass-produced pottery and porcelain. Historically this set has been associated with Queen Adelaide (1792 - 1849), wife of William IV. Although simple and originally moderately-priced, the pieces have been ornamented with silver to make them more prestigious and desirable.

How did drinking tea become a patriotic duty in Britain?

Vast geopolitical forces lie behind the creation of this simple tea set. In Britain between 1840 and 1900 the consumption of tea and sugar quadrupled. Mass consumption required mass production on an industrial scale and huge tea plantations were developed by the British in India and Sri Lanka. New sources of sugar were also developed, reducing the role of the former slave plantations in the Caribbean. Tea drinking was regarded as patriotic as it supported British trade and empire, unlike wine and coffee, beverages of imperial rivals.

Looking behind domestic tranquillity

This elegant tea set was probably made for an aristocratic or even royal household. But this object and its manufacturer, Wedgwood, were emblematic of Britain’s own transformation from the ‘polite and commercial society’ of the eighteenth century to the mass consumer society of the nineteenth. The tea set became a desired item for middle and working class households as the custom of sociable family tea parties spread across society and Wedgwood’s tasteful designs, but mass production techniques, flourished along with it.  

Yet the wider history of tea consumption belies this picture of domesticity. In the mid-eighteenth century, tea began to edge out coffee as the sociable drink. It was thought to be lighter and more health-giving. Yet China’s black and green teas, produced in its central provinces and transported down to Canton (Guangzhou), the Qing Empire’s only ‘open’ port, were the main source for European and American consumers. The tea of Assam and Ceylon only came on-stream in the 1840s and after.

It was the English East India Company which monopolised the trade, bringing tea westward in exchange for silver and later, Indian raw cotton. Cotton was one of the few commodities the Chinese Empire needed, as its population outgrew local sources of supply.  Then war and politics brutally intervened. The company’s American market was suddenly destroyed after American patriots revolted against the tea taxes imposed by Britain and stormed its ships in the famous ‘Boston tea party’ of 1773, hastening the American War of Independence.   When the United States became independent in 1783, the East India Company lost its foothold in America, just at the time when its military costs were rising as it invaded larger and larger areas in India itself. Bankruptcy loomed, but this national champion was ‘too big to fail.’

William Pitt’s government intervened and reduced the duties on tea to a fraction of what they had been.   This was what caused the surge in tea drinking in Britain and ultimately made Wedgwood and other pottery-makers a fortune. But what was there to sell to the Chinese to supply the rising demand? Silver supplies had dwindled and the demand for raw cotton was erratic.   Opium, however, was another matter. It made its own market. It was grown in western India, which the British now controlled, and sold in China through Canton. The opium habit spread from the court to the aristocracy and to ordinary people, like a sinister version of tea in Britain. A huge illicit trade developed and the Chinese authorities became worried as labourers and the army were infected.

The situation reached breaking point when the Company lost its monopoly in 1834 and private merchants, British and Indian, piled into the trade, flooding the China coast with opium. In 1839 Commissioner Lin Zexu marched to Canton and destroyed the British opium ships. So began the First Opium War of 1839-42 and the beginning of China’s long humiliation.  Two hundred or more years later the Boston Tea Party and the Opium War still haunt world politics. Behind the domestic tranquillity of this pretty tea set lies a history of warfare and exploitation.
Professor Christopher Bayly, Director of the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge

Three objects that changed the world

Tea had been drunk in England since the seventeenth century but only really by the classes that could afford it because duties were so high that it became a sort of socially high caste activity, especially for ladies. It was about polite sociability and entertaining your friends around the tea table, but they carefully locked up their tea in tea caddies.   But by the late eighteenth century, Pitt the Younger realized he could get quite as much duty if he lowered the duty on tea and then more people would drink it, and so gradually from the 1770s through to the 1830s the duties on tea were coming down, and you could say by the time this teapot was manufactured, it was in reach as a drink for the working people.  

Tea drinking takes off in a massive way in the nineteenth century.   It’s pretty widespread, because of course by that time you’ve got distribution. You’ve got tea merchants all around the country, you’ve got the railways distributing it, and it’s generally available. You’ve got packaging, you’ve got individual companies: Brookebond is starting around this time; Lipmans, all of these people are really joining the older tea merchants like Twinings and Fortnum & Mason who started in the eighteenth century. So the whole market is growing, growing, growing.   Temperance was huge; drink and the Victorians was a very big issue. The desire to have a working population that was sober and industrious was very strong, and there was a great deal of propaganda to that effect. It was tied in with dissent, Methodism and so on – sobriety, and tea really was the drink of choice.   

The middle classes have been exploding away in Britain since the eighteenth century, and the population of Britain is growing massively, and it’s becoming increasingly urbanised, but I think you can just say it’s a huge population growth in Britain at this time.   London is the largest city in the world, and you’ve got a massive increase in birth rate and the death rate means that the population is growing enormously. The British navy was everywhere, and what the British Navy wanted the British Navy usually got, and the result is that it was able to control these massive movements of goods into not only the London docks but also the other docks, the Liverpool and Bristol and all round the country, Glasgow.   Yes, you could say they did change the face of the world, for this tiny country off Western Europe.
Dr Celina Fox, art and cultural historian

Ai Weiwei at Tate Modern 2

2010-10-11T23:41:00.002+01:00

Photo: Lennart Preiss/AP (from guardian.co.uk)

Adrian Searle's review (Guardian, May 11 2010)

Tate Modern's sunflower seeds: the world in the palm of your hand
Courtesy of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, the Turbine Hall is now carpeted with a million hand-painted seeds – an image of globalisation both politically powerful and hauntingly beautiful

At first sight Ai Weiwei's installation Sunflower Seeds presents us with an undifferentiated field of grey, filling the space between the bridge and the end wall of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. It is almost disappointing. The late Felix Gonzalez-Torres's piles of cellophane-wrapped sweets, which he showed in the 1980s, were prettier, and you were free to eat them (the American artist liked the idea that people could leave his shows with a nice taste lingering in their mouths). But the sweets were also metaphors for the Aids crisis, and much besides. Nothing in art is what it seems. And you can't eat a single one of Ai Weiwei's sunflower seeds, any more than you could Marcel Duchamp's marble sugar cubes. They'd break your teeth.

But you can trudge over them, walk or skip or dance on these seeds, all of them Made in China. Or scoop up handfuls and let them run through your fingers, in the knowledge that someone, an old lady or a small-town teenager in Jingdezhen, has delicately picked up each one and anointed it with a small brush. Every seed is painted by hand. The town that once made porcelain for the imperial court has been saved from bankruptcy by making sunflower seeds. It is absurd.

I love this work. It is a world in a hundred million objects. It is also a singular statement, in a familiar, minimal form – like Wolfgang Laib's floor-bound rectangles of yellow pollen, Richard Long's stones or Antony Gormley's fields of thousands of little humanoids. Sunflower Seeds, however, is better. It is audacious, subtle, unexpected but inevitable. It is a work of great simplicity and complexity. Sunflower Seeds refers to everyday life, to hunger (the seeds were a reliable staple during the Cultural Revolution), to collective work, and to an enduring Chinese industry. But it is also symbolic. It joins several previous Turbine Hall commissions – most recently Doris Salcedo's 2008 Shibboleth and Miroslaw Balka's How It Is – in a dialogue about the social and cultural place of art.

The meanings are as multiple and singular as its form. Ai Weiwei has taken the lesson of Duchamp's readymade and Warhol's multiples and turned them into a lesson in Chinese history and western modernisation, and the price individuals in China pay for that. Every unique seed is homogenised into a sifting mass. Most contemporary Chinese art is a product made for western consumption, just as willow-pattern plates or porcelain vases were shipped out in huge quantities for the western market.

Ai is the best artist to have appeared since the Cultural Revolution in China. He has smashed ancient vases, taken a thousand Chinese citizens to a small town in Germany – his contribution to the five-yearly Documenta contemporary art show in Kassel in 2007 – made works about the Chinese government's response to the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, and the social crackdowns during the year of the Olympics. Ai takes on the world through an attitude, rather than a style. With his blogs and tweets, he is a constant communicator. However absurd his works might appear to be, he understands the place of the artist, recognising that his work exists in a global world of social, cultural and economic relations. He has a sort of social engagement Duchamp lacked, or couldn't have, and that Warhol dissembled.

Ai's field of sunflower seeds is both contemplative and barbed. Generous in spirit, everyone can get it. It will no doubt have a huge audience at Tate Modern, one that might see it as no more than an entertaining spectacle and treat it like a day at the beach. Yet Sunflower Seeds is contingent, oddly moving and beautiful. It is like quicksand.

More pictures from the Guardian site here.

Ai Weiwei at Tate Modern

2010-10-11T22:53:00.008+01:00

I knew it would be brilliant....

This video comes courtesy of The Telegraph. If it defaults to something else, please go to YouTube here.

I posted about Ai Weiwei here....

Meanwhile, The Guardian (Charlotte Higgins, guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 October 2010 17.41 BST)

People power comes to the Turbine Hall: Ai Weiwei's Sunflower Seeds
It took an army of 1,600 Chinese artisans to create Ai Weiwei's 100m handpainted porcelain 'seeds', which are scattered over the floor of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall

The floor is entirely covered with a deep layer of what appear to be grey pebbles. It is like a bleak Suffolk beach, and a toddler, getting into the spirit of it, has shed her shoes and is having a sit-down in her stockinged feet. Adults are not so comfortable: as if caught out by a freak snowstorm in the wrong shoes, several are picking a distinctly wobbly way over the crunchy, uneven surface, suddenly looking out of place in autumnal London clothes.

This is the latest installation in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall – a series of wow-factor installations that have, over the past decade, included Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth, a deep fissure running through the concrete floor of the building, and Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project, which filled the space with mist and mirrors.

There is more to Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's installation than meets the eye, however. Bend and pick up one of the "pebbles" and you can see that it resembles a sunflower seed encased in its striped husk. In fact, each one – and there are 100 million of them, covering an area of 1,000 square metres – is handmade from porcelain and has been individually handpainted.

Ai – a bearded, impassive, black-clad figure, who snapped the photographers surrounding him at today's press view almost as busily as they did him, and posted the results on Twitter – had the "seeds" made in the southern Chinese city of Jingdezhen.

"Historically, the town's only activity has been making porcelainware for over 1,000 years. The super-high-quality skill for generations has been making imperial porcelainware," he said. "In modern days, however, it has become very commercialised."

Harnessing traditional craft skills, each seed was moulded, fired, and painted with three or four individual brush strokes, often by women taking the objects home to work on them. One thousand six hundred people were involved in the process. "Even taxi drivers were talking about it," he said.

"I tried to explain to [the artisans] what we wanted them for, but they found it very difficult to understand," said Ai. "Everything they usually make is practical, and the painters are used to creating classically beautiful flowers using a high degree of skill."

He said that the workers had been paid a living wage – in fact slightly more than customary – to work on the project. "Now they are asking when we can start again," he said. "I shall have to think of a new project."

Sunflower seeds, he said, had a particular significance in recent Chinese culture and history. During the cultural revolution, Mao Zedong was often likened to the sun and the people to sunflowers, gazing adoringly at his face. But sunflowers were also a humble but valued source of food in straitened times, a snack to be consumed with friends.

Ai also likened the artwork to Twitter – a vast sea of ideas and communication contributed by individual people. Ai now uses Twitter regularly after the blogs he kept were in turn censored by the Chinese authorities. One of his online projects has been to amass the names of those killed in the Sichuan earthquakes of 2008.

What if the temptation to put one of these lovingly made objects in your pocket becomes too great? Smiling, he said: "They might also want to eat one, and that would be a safety issue for the museum." He added: "If I was in the audience I would definitely want to take a seed. But for the museum, it is a total work, and taking a seed would affect the work. Institutions have their own policies. But I know I would want to take a seed."

A spokeswoman for the museum confirmed that they would be "encouraging people not to" depart with a souvenir. After the installation at Tate Modern is closed (it is on show from tomorrow until 2 May) the seeds, which weigh 150 tons, will be shipped back to Ai's studio in Beijing, where he will think about using them for another project.

Did he make any of the 100 million sunflower seeds himself? "I made three or four," he said. "But none of them was any good."

More about Ai Weiwei in The Observer here.

Drawing paper

2010-10-04T13:14:00.002+01:00

During the DX festival, Emma picked up a newspaper at Bearspace. Called Drawing Paper, it's 'an innovative paper magazine dedicated to drawing, published to coincide with the Liverpool Biennial'. Emma thought I should see this pen and ink drawing by printmaker Julia McKenzie...called The China Sea...

Pictures taken from Julia's blog...
www.http://juliamckenzieartist.tumblr.com/page/2
http://drawing-paper.tumblr.com/post/725987124/julia-mckenzie

Thievery Part 2 - last day of Deptford X

2010-10-04T12:50:00.003+01:00

More miserable rain Sunday morning...I got a call from Charles Hayward...his wife had just crossed the Ha'Penny Hatch and seen two blokes down in the mud. Looked like they were stealing plates. Charles had to call me a few times on all the different numbers he had for me before I woke up. By then he was on the trail of the thieves who were now walking through our estate struggling to carry two carrier bags with about 30 plates in them! Leila Galloway was also about making preparations for her Deptford X event on the estate which was scheduled for 2pm. Leila apparently apprehended the guys and made them put down their hoard. The guys ran off and Leila came upstairs to let me know, whilst Charles moved the heavy loads to a safe hiding place (under my car)...

It was obviously the same characters that Steve Lewis saw yesterday...only this time their efforts had been thwarted. It turned out they had accessed the Creek via a ladder from the bridge on the eastern bank and removed mostly all of the plates on that bank. It must've been hard work for them since the ladder stops more than 6 feet above the mudbank and they appeared to have had no waders. Their ingenuity has to be admired.

However, it was the last day of the festival, the weather was awful, and it hardly seemed worth putting the plates back in the Creek. I went over to the Centre at around 1.30pm to see if there was still going to be a Lowtide Walk. The weather brightened and the walk went ahead. Because there had been so much rain, the mud had been flushed out and all sorts of new flotsam and jetsam had surfaced. I collected the largest haul yet of blue and white...only one of the fragments collected had come from the installation.

Originally I had thought that this Sunday was going to be the best day to see the piece for anyone attending Deptford X. The tide was not due in till 7.30pm. And although it was the last day of the festival I had intended to leave the dismantling of the project till the next weekend, and spend this week installing a webcam to make a film of the tides going in and out over the plates.

But I feared that if I put the stolen plates back in, and before the webcam could be set up, the thieves would be back today to remove them again...they might even be back today to remove what they had left on the western bank. Of course if I'd not had to work (for money) last week I'd've set up the webcam already and would have had the thieves on a feed!

So the decision was made to dismantle the installation after the walk...obviously this job was made much easier because almost half the installation had already been removed by the tea leafs!

Here are the last two teacups...

By 7pm, the Creek was empty of Willow and the festival over.

Thievery

2010-10-02T17:58:00.003+01:00

On my way to the market this afternoon I bumped into Steve Lewis from APT. He said he'd seen a couple of shifty looking blokes walking along Creekside earlier in the day with a carrier bag full of Willow Pattern. He wondered if they had nicked them from my installation, but noted that their boots were not muddy – it didn't look as if they had been in the Creek...perhaps it was a coincidence and they had just bought them in the high street?

I thought he was joking, and carried on to the market...later I went to the Hatch to have a look...

Here's how it was on Wednesday after I went down to mend the damage done by the Environment Agency...

This is how it is now...the teapot, the three large platters and ten large plates have been stolen from the 'right' bank...

Six large plates have been nicked from the 'left bank'.....

Everyone thought the tide would take them away, but no, this is Deptford, and so it can be no surprise that anything that is not nailed down will be carried off by a cash strapped Deptford tea leaf...

A pity they could not wait ONE MORE DAY till the festival finished tomorrow...

The resale value of the stolen plates is over £100...The piece isn't insured since the most likely threat to it would be perceived as...er...flooding – surely uninsurable! It doesn't really matter about the value since when we made the piece three weeks ago, the most obvious threat to its longevity was the river...it turns out that nature has been kind to let it stay for so long (absolutely amazing) but human intervention has ruined the display one day short of the desired (human) schedule...

More important than how the piece now looks on the last day of Deptford X, or the value of plates, if the thieves don't thoroughly sterilize the plates but sell them on, anyone who buys them and uses them risks exposure to Weil's disease (pronounced Vile's) aka Leptospirosis, also known as canicola fever, hemorrhagic jaundice, infectious jaundice, mud fever, spirochetal jaundice, swamp fever, swineherd's disease, caver's flu or sewerman's flu – a bacterial infection resulting from exposure to the Leptospira interrogans bacterium.

That is one of the reasons why Creekside Centre is so extremely Health & Safety conscious. Considering public health, I should probably get a witness statement from Steve Lewis...

CREEKERY at Deptford X 2010

2010-10-01T13:33:00.002+01:00

Sue Lawes © 2010
Ceramic in Deptford Creek at Ha’Penny Hatch, SE8
Photo: Charles Shearer

Deptford X 2010   24 September – 3 October

“The Thames...can be considered to be a museum, containing a collection of material finding its way into the river, where it is sorted and classified according to the river’s own internal physical dynamics, those of transport and deposition, tide, current and flow.”

CREEKERY is visable from Ha’Penny Hatch footbridge at lowtide between the following approximate times:

Friday 24 September: 05.00 – 13.00 & 17.30 – dark
Saturday 25 September: 05.45 – 13.45 & 18.00 – dark
Sunday 26 September: 06.15 – 14.15 & 18.30 – dark
Monday 27 September: 06.45 – 14.45
Tuesday 28 September: 07.00 – 15.00
Wednesday 29 September: 07.30 – 15.30
Thursday 30 September: 08.00 – 16.00
Friday 1 October: 08.45 – 16.45
Saturday 2 October: 09.45 – 17.00
Sunday 3 October: 11.30 – 19.30

What are all those crocks doing in the Creek?

An English interpretation of Chinese handpainted porcelain decoration developed in 1790 at the start of the Industrial Revolution...a design that traversed the world with the English colonialists and is still in production today...The Creek – home to Deptford’s industrial past, and a habitat for invasive species like the Chinese mitten crab (brought back in ships’ ballast from the far east) and the Buddleia (from the mountains of China)...The viewer surveys the spectacle from an elevated position, echoing the unusual perspective in the pattern...

The Ravensbourne, a wild river flowing into The Thames, full of flotsam and jetsam…a predominance of broken decorated blue and white ceramic washed up on the Thames foreshore, abundant due to its popularity at a time when everyone discarded their rubbish into the river...This new Willow might eventually become battered fragments to be discovered by future beachcombers...

Like the invasive species in the Creek, the artist’s intervention is a form of colonisation. The movement of the tides reflects the economic ebb and flow of trade as Europe returns to China for cheaper manufacturing, as they did with the first porcelain plate. And like China herself, much is hidden, to occasionally surface.

Technical assistance: Emma Redstone
Access and support: Creekside Education Trust
Press photos: Charles Shearer www.deptfordvisions.com

Extract from Disjecta Reliquiae: The Tate Thames Dig by Robert Williams writing about artist Mark Dion’s Tate Thames Dig in Archaeology, pp75-76 (Black Dog Publishing)

www.suelawes.co.uk

CREEKSIDE WALK
Sunday 3 October at 2pm
This walk is part of a series organised by Creekside Education Trust.
Meet at Creekside Centre, 11 Creekside SE8 4SA. Participants need to be reasonably fit since you will be walking on the bed of a wild river. Waders, waterproofs and walking sticks are provided.
Adults: £10, Children & concessions £8.50,
Family ticket (2 adults, 2 children) £28
Booking is essential (by email): creeksidecentre@yahoo.co.uk
www.creeksidecentre.org.uk

Environment Agency - before and after

2010-10-01T13:31:00.000+01:00

Before...

After...

Jill Goddard from Creekside Centre wrote on Wednesday:

I have spoken to the contractors and got out of them the contact at Workspace responsible for engaging the Environment Agency and this mess. I have spoken to him and told him what I think of his behaviour and I have banned workmen from the site until they have the decency to book access properly. I have asked for full plans of works and schedules...I will use the fact of what they said as a blatant lie and report this back to the Workspace guy so he knows.

Nick Bertram from the Centre wrote yesterday:

There was no communication. Despite what this character said we had no knowledge of what they were going to do and they didn't have any permission from us at all. I don't actually think he was lying – he had just been told what he wanted to hear.

I was down in the Creek just now and the rain has flushed the mud right out. Hooray!! I don't know if any have been washed away but I was astonished that none of your plates in the river have been smashed. The two shopping trolleys by the bridge have been shifted – the bigger one just the other side of the bridge and I couldn't find the smaller one at all. The worst of the spate has flushed through – the river's still slightly high but is safe to enter.

Alas, the weather is so awful today, there will be no cleaning of plates, and probably very few art tourists.

Feedback...from China...via Australia

2010-09-29T04:13:00.010+01:00

Dear Sue Laws,

I have just come across some web information on your Deptford Creek project which amused me as I'm just off to HangZhou (tomorrow) with a trusty Blue Willow plate in my case for a few weeks of audio recording and photo sessions (in-situ as it were).

The project will manifest as a sound sculpture installation (slated for the ISEA festival in Istanbul 2011) in which a series of porcelain plates will be mounted on audio actuators in effect rendering them as a multiple channel sound work.

The other item that may be of some interest to you is a permanent installation in the new state library in Brisbane, Queensland entitled the "Great Wall of China" which is close to reality as the architectural space is literally filled with Willow Pattern ceramics (Brisbane is twinned with Shanghai).

Dr Nigel Helyer
Sonic Objects; Sonic Architecture
The Nature and Culture of Sound

+61419493495
sonic@sonicobjects.com
http://www.sonicobjects.com

Hei Sue,

You're right nothing on the web even at the State Library of Queensland site, anyhow here is just one small section of the 'great wall'. However this is not my project - I simply admired it whilst I was installing in the new state gallery of modern art next door.

Cheers nigel

Ps this is installed in a giant balcony type architectural space, open to the elements on one side.

The Bride Stripped Bare - Environment Agency blunder – and the Terracotta Army

2010-09-29T02:13:00.009+01:00

There have now been 19 tides (I think) since we installed Creekery. Because of the tides, we installed on 19th September, five or six days before Deptford X opened officially. I knew already from our experiments that there would be a build up of silt on the plates that would dull the blue within four or five days...but when it came to the weekend of the 24th/25th, the first weekend of the festival, and the plates weren't looking so pristine, I worried about going down to clean them. However, the weather and the tides weren't very helpful.

I pondered the necessity of 'cleaning the plates'...it seemed a great many folk expected them to be left as they were and let nature take its course, and weren't in the least bothered that the bright blue had faded. On the other hand, those new to the idea were looking at a postcard of brightly coloured plates and expecting to see it. After all, the festival had only just begun...

I spent a lot of time over the weekend feeling like an OCD housewife worrying about the cleanliness of my plates. It didn't help that when I went to see Liz Harrison's award winning installation of bird song at Deptford Station that my attention was drawn to the filthy state of the station. Everything in Deptford felt filthy.

There was so much going on with open studios and actual paid work (I had to work on Sunday) that I had hardly had time to do the washing up in my own home. Then one of my patrons wrote to say she had been along to see the piece and "it was filthy"...

However, I was also quite keen on the idea of a TERRACOTTA ARMY of plates marching across the Creek, which was what was happening all too quickly. So I was quite undecided today (yesterday) when I went over to the bridge to make a judgement call. Either I would decide to clean them or I could leave them to get so muddy they would be half moons of mud by the end of the festival on Sunday and that could be equally great.

It was the second day this week that the Creekside Centre was hosting a school party. I had expected to see, when I went over to the bridge, Nick Bertram and a class of school children and their teachers in the Creek below. However, what I saw was three people in yellow jackets surveying the walls of the Creek. I suddenly realised they (and I) were looking at bare walls.

The "yellow jackets" were the Environment Agency, and they had just removed ALL the shrubbery from the terraces. They had done this without consulting anyone from Creekside Centre, and Nick, who was just about to take a class of kids down to explore the Creek, was absolutely livid. All the plants – the flora that he talks about and refers to on his walks – had been cut down.

This was it when Charles Shearer photographed it just less than two weeks ago...

As far as Creekery is concerned, they had torn down all the plants in our 'dresser', leaving the crockery exposed. They had moved the vulnerable teacup (that we hadn't weighted down) that sat next to the teapot (that we had weighted down) and which had been bolstered by the plants in the terrace, down to the lower terrace where it would surely get carried away. The big plate on the top shelf was left vulnerable cos it wasn't dug in but had been supported by the now missing greenery, and they had knocked over five plates in the mud near the terrace like they were skittles in a bowling alley...

I looked across and the left bank (or right bank depending on your view) looked OK...but barren of growth...

I had to do something. Fortunately I knew the tide was out for a while, especially since Nick was just taking the kids out...so I got my waders and went down with a sponge (wetted by the outgoing tide), rearranged things, and got the built up silt off every plate, finishing just about the same time as Nick returned from down south with the kids. They assembled by the bridge and Nick showed them how to scoop up minnows and shrimp with their nets, whilst I continued on the left bank to polish the plates (no CRB check so absolutely no contact with the kids)...

As I wiped off the last plate, Nick had just finished frightening them with the crabs that live under a piece of corrugated iron and they all squealed with fear when they saw some real live crabs scuttle out. Then he asked them to applaud with clapping hands the old washer woman who'd been cleaning the rockery....

Hope this picture of the young'uns isn't illegal...

I didn't wipe the backs of the plates....Wonder what it looks like from the DLR...

Meanwhile the same joke got cracked again by a volunteer...This Creek is Minging....

I'm hoping now someone can help with a webcam.

Gonna put some teacups in tomorrow (today) to make up for the two that floated away the Monday before last...

Creekery photographed by Charles Shearer

2010-09-23T13:43:00.004+01:00

And here are some pix taken by me at high tide and as the tide goes out. Charles is hoping to get some similar shots at some point...

The Willow Pattern verse

2010-09-22T00:30:00.004+01:00

Two birds flying high,

Little boat passing by,

Wooden bridge with willow o'er,

Three men passing, maybe four,

A little house with open door,

Apple tree with apples on,

A crooked fence to end my song.

This verse is just one of many variations (see this highly unacademic site here at the potteries.org for alternatives) which are nursery rhymes from the mid 19th century, that describe the Willow Pattern and were probably simplistic accompaniments to the slightly more adult legend – now believed to be a story invented to sell crockery.

It appears I haven't ever posted about the 'legend'. This is probably because I started the blog a year after I had done the legend to death and moved on to more sinister subjects such as British colonialism.

Recapping briefly, the earliest record of the 'Willow legend' is found in 1849 in The Family Friend, some 60 years after the pattern first became popular. No Chinese tale, song, play or oration has been uncovered that could be linked to the 1849 'legend', although there are some stories that come close. The legend arises at a time when the pattern was losing popularity. Some authorities say the nursery verses are based on an old Staffordshire folk song. Some are certain the elaborate love story told in the legend was invented by the management of the Caughley factory in 1790 (the origin of the pattern)...

The pattern has survived and remains largely unchanged throughout all the art movements of the 19th century, but obviously being part of the less lofty applied arts and commercial production, it has no place in 'art' history. It has continued to thrive as an object of mass appeal, and, accordingly, no snob would entertain it. The pattern has never been without detractors (Charles Dickens just one of many, see my post), but it has never been denigrated in verse...Longfellow, somewhat a populist and a lover of myth and legend, inevitably referred to it in a long paeon to the 'ceramic arts' (Keramos):

Nor less the courser household ware, –
The Willow pattern, that we knew
In childhood, with its bridge of blue
Leading to unknown thoroughfares:
The solitary man who stares
At the white river flowing through
Its arches, the fantastic trees
And wild perspective of the view:
....

Meanwhile, countless baby boomers have been told a version of the story by mothers or grandmothers...This version (Anon) has no particular literary merits and the tale "exhibits truly characteristic colonial elements of a somewhat smug Victorian view of old Cathay. Its citizens are 'little brown' men in a land where the wealthy live in compounds (in fact, the European experience in China in the 19th century)." (David Richard Quinter)

My Willowware plate has a story,
Pictorial, painted in blue,
From the land of the tea and the tea plant
And the little brown man with a queue.

Whatever the food you serve, daughter,
Romance enters into the feast,
If you only pay heed to the legend,
On the old chinaware plate from the East.

Koong Shee was a mandarin's daughter
And Chang was her lover, ah me!
For surely her father's accountant
Might never wed pretty Koong Shee.

So Chang was expelled from the compound,
The lovers' alliance to break,
And pretty Koong She was imprisoned
In a little blue house by the lake.

The doughty old mandarin reasoned
It was time his daughter should wed,
And the groom of his choosing should banish
That silly romance from her head.

For years had great artists been stitching
In symbols the dress she should wear,
Her headband of scarlet lay waiting,
She should ride in a gold wedding chair.

He was busily plotting and planning
When a message was brought him one day,
Young Chang had invaded the palace
And taken his sweetheart away.

They were over the bridge when he saw them,
They were passing the big willow tree,
And a boat at the edge of the water
Stood waiting for Change and Koong Shee.

The furious mandarin followed
The groom with revenge in his eyes,
But the little boat danced on the water
And travelled away with the prize.

But vengeance pursued to their shelter
And burned the pagoda, they say;
From out of the flames rose the lovers:
A pair of doves winging away.

They flew toward the western heaven,
The pretty Koong Shee and her Chang,
Or so says the famous old legend
From the land of the Yangtse Kiang.

I wouldn't be one to deny it,
For the little blue dove and her mate
Forever are flying together
Across my Willowware plate.

That's enuf poetry...

A big 'X'

2010-09-21T21:44:00.002+01:00

Earlier this evening I joined the Creekside Centre's scheduled Lowtide Walk at 6pm for a brief spell...I wanted to check with the walk leader Nick whether the plates we have put on the bed of the river are in the way of walkers...He pointed out three that were vulnerable – that would probably not so much cause a tripping hazard to walkers (since they were fairly visible once pointed out) but might be damaged by walkers...we may need to move them.

Whilst the walkers went off up the creek, I tended my garden with a handheld pressure sprayer and observed how much silt had built up on the plates, which have now survived four tides...Then I returned to dry land to put up some laminated notices near the bridge that explain the piece. After that I drew a big X near the entrance to the Centre by pouring six bags of salvaged pottery fragments onto the ground. It was dark when I left, and the walkers had still not returned. Here's the big X (for Deptford X) by flashlight...

Hopefully I'll get a better shot in daylight!
----------
Here's a better shot in daylight (but still a snap on the Sony)...

Willow verse on a crooked fence

2010-09-21T21:20:00.006+01:00

Yesterday, Charles came to take photographs again. Can't wait to see them! Meanwhile, Emma and I attempted to put some vinyl lettering on the top of the railings on the turret (or looking post) of the bridge. Whilst we were fumbling about with lengths of white lettering, one of the strips was blown about by the breeze and disappeared into the Creek never to be seen again...

Today I got the missing words remade and went back to finish the job.

At high tide, only a very large platter and a tea-set were intended to be visible in the terrace (or 'dresser' as we like to call it). I saw that we had misjudged how high the tide would come, and two of the three cups and saucers that we had placed next to the teapot had floated away...we had not weighed them down...

Meanwhile there was an extraordinary site to be viewed from the other side of the bridge...Four Canada geese appeared to be walking on water...

They soon came downstream for a cup of tea...

Backstage

2010-09-21T20:55:00.001+01:00

Emma sets up the machinery to drill a hole through a Willow bowl...the bowl was then equipped with a steel rod to embed it on the floor of the Creek. Since this was felt to be a tripping hazard for walkers, we decided to attach paving slabs to the plates instead...

Elevated view of the Creek

2010-09-21T13:09:00.003+01:00

On Monday 6th September, I had the opportunity of taking some photos of the view from the nearby new development on Greenwich High Road. I was hoping to use these in a drawing for a new Creekside Willow plate, but the building isn't actually as tall as I thought it was, and it was impossible to get the view I wanted. Still, it's good reference material...

Here is a picture taken from the hoardings surrounding the construction site:

Creekery installation

2010-09-21T12:58:00.003+01:00

Installation took place in the afternoon on Sunday 19th September. At around 1pm I met with Jill Goddard at Creekside Centre to borrow some waders for Charles Shearer (www.deptfordvisions.com), the photographer who has kindly agreed to take some pix of the piece. Then Emma turned up and we began to sort through what order we would work in and where things would go. Charles turned up at 2pm and began familiarising himself with the terrain and what lenses and filters he might use...

Maximum lowtide was predicted at 5pm, but by 3pm both banks of the river were exposed and we started work. By 5pm we had covered one bank. Jill was still working in the Centre and she invited us all in for tea and toasted tea cakes...Charles left and we returned to the Creek to complete the other bank and the middle channel, finishing at around 7.30pm when it was almost dark.

During the afternoon Emma was visited by a kestrel which swooped down beside her, two swans posed for Charles for almost five minutes, and a great many people crossed the bridge and made various comments to us...My favourite: "Hey, look, there's some Wedgwood!" (Alas, it is poundshop Willow...)

Those passing on Sunday had perhaps the closest experience to Mark Titchner's Deptford X theme –"daily discoveries uncovered by chance encounters on busy streets" – since they were not aware it was an art installation for Deptford X. It made me ponder the incongruity of needing to publicise something (and explain it) as part of a festival and the emphasis of the theme on people coming across the piece innocently, the better to be charmed or puzzled by it.

Due to either vanity or modesty, I'm not sure which, I had previously suggested to Charles that neither Emma or myself were keen on being photographed, but forgot to amend that request so that we might have some documentation of us working. Fortunately, Emma's friend Biss came by at around 6pm and took some pics on her camera phone...and before it got too dark I took some snaps of the completed installation...

Deptford X 2010 - no leaflets yet but publicity out there...

2010-09-02T16:28:00.003+01:00

www.spoonfed.co.uk/spooners/loredana-12243/the-deptford-x-festival-3640/

Two things noticeable about this page...
The plates are the wrong way round in the Creekery publicity pic. Oh dear....and the new development Creekside Village isn't on it...
And I find out that Annabel Tilley is involved in the festival. Annabel was one of the first artists I came across who had been working with the Willow Pattern. It appears she has been busy since on other projects...

Creek hoard

2010-09-01T20:58:00.001+01:00

Selectively collected on the Creekery Project's latest lowtide foray into the Creek (28 August 2010):

6 knives
5 forks
15 pieces of blue & white pottery (5 Willow) and one pink one
1 gold & glass paste ring
1 whole pipe
1 set of keys
1 button
1 commemorative spoon from the US Supreme Court
1 ink bottle
1 square plate intact
1 piece blue glass
1 plastic children's book cover (Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot)
1 nail (a token – there are too many encrusted nails to collect)

The cutlery was found in the mudflats lying below Jones, the catering suppliers...

Creekery - the canvas

2010-09-01T20:14:00.004+01:00

The view from Ha'Penny Hatch footbridge looking south at lowtide (August 2010). The bridge seen here is the viaduct carrying the Docklands Light Railway from Greenwich to Deptford Bridge and on to Lewisham. The line was part of the second stage extensions to the DLR and was opened in 1999.

The official opening of the new Ha'penny Hatch footbridge in 2002 (picture courtesy National Maritime Museum, London).
The footbridge crosses Deptford Creek alongside the railway bridge. The modern lift bridge replaced the old wooden Ha'penny Hatch toll bridge, which closed in the 1920s. It cost a ha'penny – half an old penny – to cross.

Some more history...

Deptford Creek is the last tidal stretch of the River Ravensbourne (Randisbourne) before it flows into a part of the River Thames known as Greenwich Reach. The Creek lies partly in the Borough of Lewisham and partly in the Borough of Greenwich.

The most famous industrial plant in Deptford Creek was the Power Station. It stood at the mouth of the Creek and supplied electricity to Central London. The river provided an unlimited supply of water for cooling and allowed coal from the North East to be shipped in easily.

The bridge over Deptford Creek was the site of the Battle of Deptford Bridge, 17 June 1497, the last battle of the Cornish Rebellion of 1497.

From the 16th century onwards until its closure in the 19th century, the proximity of Royal Dockyard created by Henry VIII at Deptford gave employment to many small shipbuilders on the creek. Queen Elizabeth I knighted Francis Drake on board the Golden Hind in Deptford Creek on Drake's return from his circumnavigation of the globe in 1580. The Golden Hind remained moored in the creek until it broke up.

The tidal Creek has been the site for three corn mills. The power of the tide would drive the machinery to mill the corn, which would be brought into the Creek by barge. The Domesday Book recorded eleven corn mills on the Ravensbourne in the 11th century. The 17th century London diarist John Evelyn bought one of these mills – Brookmills – in 1668 for "grinding colour".

From the early 19th century the Creek also hosted chemical works, engineering works, gasworks, soap and candle factories, sawmills, coal and timber wharves, paint works, breweries, food stores and verdigris works for the manufacture of copper sulphate.

Text gathered from wikipedia and portcities.org.uk

Deptford X 2010 - work continues

2010-09-01T20:12:00.003+01:00

I went to a Poundshop Cash & Carry in Enfield and purchased over 100 Willoware items at cost price. The place was recommended by the proprietors of Peter & Joan in Deptford High Street. The 17" Churchill plate sold at £1.41 inc VAT. Peter & Joan sell them at £2.45. Some items had to be carefully chosen since there were many seconds in the stock available. Other items were quite expensive – teapots were over £8.

Deptford X 2010 - work has begun

2010-08-31T20:31:00.004+01:00

“The Thames...can be considered to be a museum, containing a collection of material finding its way into the river, where it is sorted and classified according to the river’s own internal physical dynamics, those of transport and deposition, tide, current and flow.”
Extract from Disjecta Reliquiae The Tate Thames Dig, Robert Williams writing about artist Mark Dion’s Tate Thames Dig in Archaeology, pp75-76 (Black Dog Publishing)
See my post on Dion back in February here.

At the end of June this year, I put in a proposal for an installation for Deptford X 2010:

CREEKERY
Venue: Deptford Creek (via Ha’Penny Hatch)
Some modern Willowware is placed in the mudbanks of the Creek to replenish older material removed by mudlarkers. The new pieces will be subjected to the river’s dynamics of tide, current and flow, perhaps eventually ending up on the Thames foreshore as battered fragments to be discovered by future beachcombers.

On 9th July I got confirmation to go ahead with the idea.

Since then there has been progress afoot...Permission was sought from Creekside Centre to get access to the Creek. I told a friend, Emma Redstone, about the idea. Emma's parents are keen ceramics experts and had already kindly identified fragments I had collected from the Thames foreshore (see my post in December 2009 here). Emma is also a natural mudlarker, having grown up close to the Thames. She came on a Creek Walk (run by the Centre) with me on 15th July to help me install an experiment. This was to see if the plates would stay put in the mudbanks for any length of time, before being washed away by the tide. Nick Bertram was also on hand, on behalf of the Centre, since we were not at that point covered by the Centre's insurance.

We placed ten (one broken in half) modern Churchill microwaveable plates (17" and 12") into the mud. The next day, our footprints had vanished, but the plates were still there...we viewed them from the bridge.

We left them there three days, then went down into the Creek again to remove them. Whilst down in the Creek washing the plates to carry them back, we noticed how they shone brightly underwater and began to figure out how they might be kept there, since the current in the centre of the river Ravensbourne is very fast and strong and the tide would surely drag them up or down river.

Emma, a trained theatre technician and carpenter, came up with a couple of solutions as to how we might keep the plates from being swept away, and went away to experiment, using resources available at her workplace.

We reconvened a couple more times in the Creek to test Emma's ideas, and hopefully we now have a solution that also passes the rigorous Risk Assessment required by the Creekside Education Trust.

Caroline Slotte

2010-07-18T20:05:00.002+01:00

Caroline Slotte From the series Rose Border Multiple, Multiple Blue I, reworked second hand object, 2007

Photo: Tuukka Paikkari

Caroline Slotte From the series Rose Border Multiple, detail

Caroline Slotte From the series Gone Fishing, detail

Finnish artist Caroline Slotte's artist's statement from her website www.carolineslotte.com:

"Objects in our private sphere stir feelings in us and connect us to our history. They are tangible reminders of the past, of our own life story, and that of the family. In this way the most humble object can function as a key to the past, as a key to our inner. The poetry of everyday objects, with all the memories and associations that these objects contain: that is the starting point for my artistic practise.

"In my work I examine the memory-bearing aspect of second hand objects. What do remnants of lived lives – photographs, clothes, and other utility objects – have to say about us humans? What role do the objects in our surroundings play in the creation of continuity in our existence, and in the construction of a continuous life story?

"The manipulation of existing material is central in my work. I rework found objects, mainly second hand ceramic items, so that they take on new meanings.

"I’m interested in how the interventions direct or obstruct the associations of the viewer. The manipulated objects are characterised by a tension between the recognisable and the mysterious, the familiar and the unfamiliar. I rework the ceramics by cutting directly into it, by sculpting and sanding, and by combining elements from different objects. In this way, the work process becomes a way of questioning the material and highlighting stories contained in the objects."

Caroline is taking part in the National Norwegian Artistic Research Fellowships Programme with a practice based research project called 'Second Hand Stories'. More here.

Paul Scott at Contemporary Applied Arts

2010-07-18T19:37:00.001+01:00

"Paul Scott’s work involves the digital manipulation of established vocabularies of printed motif, pattern and image from industrial ceramic archives and engraved book illustration. Cloning and collaging these, sometimes with photographic elements, he creates contemporary artworks in ceramic and printed form. The altered ready-mades, hand-built sculptural vignettes and architectural interventions are all characterized by a blue and white semiotic. Together with a focus on pastoral landscapes and chinoiserie, Scott’s work draws on the cultural wallpaper in our minds, playing with our sense of the familiar."
www.caa.org.uk/exhibitions/archive/2010/nicholas-arroyave-portela/paul-scott.html
23 July – 21 August 2010

Paul Scott's Blog:

http://web.me.com/cumbrianblues/

Paul Scott on BBC Cumbria:

www.bbc.co.uk/cumbria/content/articles/2008/02/12/cumbrian_blues_video_feature.shtml

www.cumbrianblues.com/

San Sebastian Willow

2010-07-18T19:12:00.000+01:00

The view from the balcony at our holiday apartment in San Sebastian...one of four willows...

Robert Dawson

2010-07-18T19:01:00.004+01:00

Robert Dawson Willow Pattern with Uncertainty, print on bone china, dia. 27 cm, 2003

Robert Dawson is currently showing this piece at Jerwood Contemporary Makers, Jerwood Space, London

"This exhibition at the Jerwood Space in south London, the third in a series, shows us work by applied artists that has stolen a march on all those stuck-up fine artists out there. It is a collection of unique, hand-made objects crafted in a variety of materials, including felt, glass, clay, wood, plastic and woven basketware.

"These are works that often begin in the idea of usefulness, and then do a unique sideways drift into something slightly odder...Look at Robert Dawson's Willow Pattern with Uncertainty, for example, a bone-china dinner plate overprinted with that oh-so-familiar willow pattern. Except that this is not quite true. It is over-printed only in part. As your eye moves across the plate, the patterning begins to fog, fade, mist over. You are denied that customary pleasure..."

Review by Michael Glover, The Independent, 29 June 2010

More work by Robert Dawson pertaining to Willow Pattern, taken from his website www.aestheticsabotage.com:

Robert Dawson Can you walk from the garden, does your heart understand,

print on bone china, each plate dia 27cm, 1996

Robert Dawson Old New Borrowed Blue,

print on ceramic tiles, 3.6x7.35m, 2008, Churchill Hospital, Oxford

Robert Dawson In Perspective Willow 1,

print on bone china, dia.27cm, limited edition, 1996

Last ever Big Brother house goes all circus and chinoiserie

2010-06-29T22:59:00.002+01:00

The plate design embedded in the Big Brother dining table is Spode's Italian Blue (or Blue Italian), first introduced in 1816. The central scene is based on engravings after a watercolour by a Dutch artist. The border is an interpretation of Japanese Imari design. This design is still in production.

Empire

2010-06-06T00:30:00.001+01:00

Empire, 2010. Ceramic and tea. 30cmx30cm

The Blueing of America

2010-06-04T22:26:00.006+01:00

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Larry David is at Elaine's house, trying to persuade her to take part in a new Seinfield show. Elaine has a huge collection of blue and white ceramic. The pattern on the plate on the dresser behind Larry is called 'Trophy'.

Thomas Minton's Trophy, c.1800. Listed in 1810 as both a table and a teaware pattern. The design is a direct copy of an original found painted on Chinese porcelain. The same basic pattern was used by numerous factories. Plate diameter 241 mm.

In this project I have largely ignored the American's love of blue and white. I have concentrated on the Eastern hemisphere because this where it originates and where the British Empire grew, based on the tea trade. I particularly liked using the Eastern hemisphere, since it is not the usual representation used in the West when thinking of the world.

In Willow! David Richard Quinter talks about the 'Blueing of America'...

"Animated by the outreach of British imperialism, the Willow Pattern plate was a child of Empire; soon it would travel across Europe and around the globe, to the rhythm of an army's trudge and the slap and thunder of an oak-timbered hull. (The 1935 movies, Mutiny on the Bounty, probably got it just about right in showing Captain William Bligh (Charles Laughton) using in 1789 a Willow Pattern type bowl at shipboard mealtimes).

Wherever the British settled they took Willow Pattern-ware with them, or ordered it delivered to their new lands. Throughout the 19th century the Willow Pattern found as prominent a place in the Canadian or American home, on a New Zealand or Australian sheep station, or in the southern African mansion, as it did – and still does – in a Scottish manse or in an English council flat.

Sometimes it found a resting place where the British were not particularly in evidece – in Mexico, for instance. In the first quarter of the 19th century, shortly after Spain's domination ended, large quantities of British crockery were ordered and shipped to Mexico to grace the tables of a new class, a home-grown elite.

The sundering of political ties between Britain and its former American colonies in the 1770s did not sever the longstanding emotional or familial bonds, and the Willow Patter plate had a busy role in the new American kitchen and dining room as it did across the Atlantic Ocean. Indeed, even that cultivated trend-setter, George Washington, the United States' first president, used, evidently enjoyed and eight times ordered more of the Chinese porcelains, largely blue-and-white Canton- and Naking-style ware – the hand-painted Chinese inspired and derived versions of the Willow Pattern – for his home and official functions at Mount Vernon. "

The Americans began their own trade with China in 1783; 16 months later in May 1785, the Empress of China returned to New York to unload a cargo of fine teas, silks, cotton fabric, cinnamon and 60 tons of porcelain. They had traded furs, pig lead, woolen cloth, coinage, and 30 tons of ginseng (grown in the Appalachian Mountains). The ship's owners made a 25% return on their investment – later to be much more...

to be continued

British Gas vandals

2010-06-04T20:17:00.005+01:00

I was passing Creekside Centre yesterday and noticed there was a lot going on in the yard. A lot of people attending a training event on green roofs were enjoying the sunshine outside the classroom, and a couple of vans were parked at the front of the yard. The site is leased from British Gas, and for weeks – on and off – the company has been investigating a gas leak. As I stood at the gate, one of the vans drove right onto my World In Pieces (aka China Blues)...

Hardly able to believe my eyes, I went in...I found Nick Bertram, Creekside Centre staff member, who came out and shouted at the gas workers. One of the chaps apologised, saying he thought it was already broken (well, yes, it is a mosaic of broken ceramic with weeds growing in it). He removed his van (by driving back over it again!)...

Now I don't know whether to repair it or remove it. The Centre staff are fond of it, but it's looking hellishly ropey...

Postscript: decided to tidy it up...

'A Nice Cup of Tea' by George Orwell

2010-05-04T18:54:00.004+01:00

(Evening Standard, 12 January 1946)

If you look up 'tea' in the first cookery book that comes to hand you will probably find that it is unmentioned; or at most you will find a few lines of sketchy instructions which give no ruling on several of the most important points. This is curious, not only because tea is one of the main stays of civilization in this country, as well as in Eire, Australia and New Zealand, but because the best manner of making it is the subject of violent disputes.

When I look through my own recipe for the perfect cup of tea, I find no fewer than eleven outstanding points. On perhaps two of them there would be pretty general agreement, but at least four others are acutely controversial. Here are my own eleven rules, every one of which I regard as golden:

•    First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowadays – it is economical, and one can drink it without milk – but there is not much stimulation in it. One does not feel wiser, braver or more optimistic after drinking it. Anyone who has used that comforting phrase 'a nice cup of tea' invariably means Indian tea.

•    Secondly, tea should be made in small quantities – that is, in a teapot. Tea out of an urn is always tasteless, while army tea, made in a cauldron, tastes of grease and whitewash. The teapot should be made of china or earthenware. Silver or Britanniaware teapots produce inferior tea and enamel pots are worse; though curiously enough a pewter teapot (a rarity nowadays) is not so bad.

•    Thirdly, the pot should be warmed beforehand. This is better done by placing it on the hob than by the usual method of swilling it out with hot water.

•    Fourthly, the tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right. In a time of rationing, this is not an idea that can be realized on every day of the week, but I maintain that one strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak ones. All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes – a fact which is recognized in the extra ration issued to old-age pensioners.

•    Fifthly, the tea should be put straight into the pot. No strainers, muslin bags or other devices to imprison the tea. In some countries teapots are fitted with little dangling baskets under the spout to catch the stray leaves, which are supposed to be harmful. Actually one can swallow tea-leaves in considerable quantities without ill effect, and if the tea is not loose in the pot it never infuses properly.

•    Sixthly, one should take the teapot to the kettle and not the other way about. The water should be actually boiling at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on the flame while one pours. Some people add that one should only use water that has been freshly brought to the boil, but I have never noticed that it makes any difference.

•    Seventhly, after making the tea, one should stir it, or better, give the pot a good shake, afterwards allowing the leaves to settle.

•    Eighthly, one should drink out of a good breakfast cup – that is, the cylindrical type of cup, not the flat, shallow type. The breakfast cup holds more, and with the other kind one's tea is always half cold before one has well started on it.

•    Ninthly, one should pour the cream off the milk before using it for tea. Milk that is too creamy always gives tea a sickly taste.

•    Tenthly, one should pour tea into the cup first. This is one of the most controversial points of all; indeed in every family in Britain there are probably two schools of thought on the subject. The milk-first school can bring forward some fairly strong arguments, but I maintain that my own argument is unanswerable. This is that, by putting the tea in first and stirring as one pours, one can exactly regulate the amount of milk whereas one is liable to put in too much milk if one does it the other way round.

•    Lastly, tea – unless one is drinking it in the Russian style – should be drunk without sugar. I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tealover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.

Some people would answer that they don't like tea in itself, that they only drink it in order to be warmed and stimulated, and they need sugar to take the taste away. To those misguided people I would say: Try drinking tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely that you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again. These are not the only controversial points to arise in connexion with tea drinking, but they are sufficient to show how subtilized the whole business has become. There is also the mysterious social etiquette surrounding the teapot (why is it considered vulgar to drink out of your saucer, for instance?) and much might be written about the subsidiary uses of tealeaves, such as telling fortunes, predicting the arrival of visitors, feeding rabbits, healing burns and sweeping the carpet. It is worth paying attention to such details as warming the pot and using water that is really boiling, so as to make quite sure of wringing out of one's ration the twenty good, strong cups of that two ounces, properly handled, ought to represent.

www.george-orwell.org/A_Nice_Cup_of_Tea/0.html

Tea stained willow (2)

2010-05-04T18:46:00.006+01:00

This time the drawing has been done first and will be used as a mat for the next month or so...(see Stained Past)

Suffolk fragments

2010-04-04T23:59:00.004+01:00

An old friend, Simon Farr, came to visit last week. We used to work together over 20 years ago at the Albany Theatre. He has lived with his family in Aldeburgh, Suffolk for some time now so meeting up was a special event. Simon is a political cartoonist for The Guardian, and his wife Annie Lee is a potter. They run a B&B.

I showed him this project, and on his return he sent me a picture of some shards he found in Aldeburgh. He wants to find all the bits so that he can join them together to re-make the plate. I started this project wanting to do the same!

Postscript: I went to visit Simon and Annie in May...we went to look at the beach where Simon had found these fragments, but didn't find much on that day. Close by is a working brickworks, so the broken ceramic may have arrrived on the beach the same way as the stuff I found in Halstow, much further south in the Swale estuary. Household debris was burned and brought by barge to the brickworks, the ash extracted to use in the kilns, and the remainder dumped.

Discover Greenwich

2010-04-04T23:16:00.005+01:00

Last Sunday I visited the spanking new Discover Greenwich, a permanent exhibition housed in the Royal Naval College, which tells the continuing story of the Old Royal Naval College and Maritime Greenwich. I came across an exhibit of pottery fragments:

1. Ceramic chamber pot, late 17th century
Miniature, or child-sized chamber pot in tin-glazed ware with Chinese-style decoration showing figures in a landscape, probably made in Southwark.
2. Ceramic chamber pot, mid 18th century
Large chamber pot in London-area post-medieval redware with internal lead glaze. Probably made at Woolwich or Deptford.
3. Ceramic chamber pot, mid 18th century
Chamber pot in Westerwald stoneware, imported from the Rhineland, Germany. It is decorated with an ornate floral rosette opposite the handle and large lions and medallions.
4. Ceramic dish, late 17th or 18th century
London-area post-medieval redware probably made at Woolwich or Deptford
5. Ceramic plate, early to mid-18th century
Tin-glazed with decoration in darker blue on a pale blue background, showing a peacock standing in a landscape with a border of flowers, a butterfly and a dragonfly.
6. Ceramic dish, 17th century
Tin-glazed with polychrome decoration, showing part of the leaves, stem and petals of a flower. Probably made in Southwark 1630-80.

On the way back I found the tide was out, so I did a spot of beachcombing and found a hoard of blue and white...

Stained past

2010-02-12T13:22:00.008Z

Stained Past #1 350x250mm, Ink, gel pen & tea on watercolour paper ©2010

Just finished this. The paper was stained first by being laid on the surface at my studio 'tea station' (atop of the caravan fridge) for over a month, where it collected cup prints and drips from a hundred or so tea makings. The drawing came after and ink was spilled. Am now trying it the other way round.

Royal Doulton Triangular Pitcher

2010-02-12T12:53:00.006Z

A Christmas present from my sister, another fine piece to add to the collection. Circa 1891 and possibly worth $300 according to Gaston's Value Guide. Maybe.

See another piece my sister found for me:
http://thewillowpatternproject.blogspot.com/2008/12/christmas-time-for-dickens.html

Mark Dion - Tate Thames Dig

2010-02-12T12:35:00.007Z

In the summer last year I went to see 'Classified: Contemporary Art at Tate Britain', which was a display of recent major acquisitions which included stuff by Hirst and the Chapman brothers. I came across Mark Dion for the first time, whose Tate Thames Dig 1999 groups together objects found on the banks of the Thames in a large mahogany cabinet. One of the drawers contained nothing but blue & white ceramic fragments. The piece was the result of Dion's organised dig and beachcomb of the foreshore at Millbank and Bankside and was first displayed when Tate Modern opened. I missed it then, and quite possibly might not have noticed it then either.

"Like a good detective, Dion revels in seeing beyond individual fragments to recognise larger patterns; making connections between often seemingly unrelated objects and events. Through the careful juxtaposition of the finds from the Tate Thames Dig, Dion creates new layers of meaning, linking our thoughts to the constructions of the past and choices for the future."

Taken from Art Now: Mark Dion: Tate Thames Dig 26 October 1999 – 26 February 2000. Text by Clarrie Wallis
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/artnow/markdion/default.shtm

Postcards from Stoke & China

2010-01-18T19:49:00.005Z

Some new work...the first four of possibly 16 or more small roughly postcard sized canvases which when hung side by side will make up one piece like a tiled wall...

Stoke 1, China 1, Stoke 2, China 2
Oil on canvas, 180x130mm ⓒ Sue Lawes 2010

More Tea Art...

2010-01-17T19:42:00.003Z

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_HBCTSsYyQ

Twinings - The Art of Tea

2010-01-17T19:22:00.009Z

http://www.twinings.co.uk/twinings-discoveries/blog-post/2010/01/04/twinings-discovers-the-art-of-tea-with-our-new-infusions-ad/?cHash=cdb0b3465b

Twining's new advert (launched this January) aims to "demonstrate an innovative artistic concept" by artist Tom Parks. However, Twinings were also in the news for other reasons...

Twinings axes 400 jobs
by Julia Finch

Primark may be driving profits at ABF, but its posh tea division Twinings is proving less resilient to the recession.Some 400 jobs are to be axed in the north east and Hampshire as Britons loses their taste for premium priced teas.

All fall in demand for aromatic teas such as Lady Grey and Lemon Grove has led Twinings to announce plans to close its packaging sites at North Shields with the loss of 263 jobs. Packaging for the UK market will be relocated to Andover, where they could be another 130 job losses.

Although demand has increased for its Everyday tea, the company said it was embarking on a "reorganisation of its tea manufacturing footprint" to cut costs. It plans to install new high-speed equipment at its Andover factory, double the size of its Chinese factory to serve the Asian and US markets and build a new factory in Poland to cater for all other global markets.

Twinings, which has used Stephen Fry as its advertising frontman, said the changes were " a necessary step which will allow Twinings to remain competitive" and that it made no sense to import tea from China, package it in the UK and then export it back to the Far East.

The jobs will be lost in the next two years and the reorganisation will cost £19m.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/03/twinings-tea-job-cuts

Meanwhile...

Primark sales up to Christmas show 19% jump
Parent Associated British Foods hails performance, but admits drop in gross margins
by Graeme Wearden

Primark has enjoyed another strong Christmas as demand for its discount clothing showed little sign of abating.

Parent company Associated British Foods reported that Primark's total sales in the last four months of 2009 were 19% higher than a year ago, "ahead of expectations". ABF declined to give a sales figure that stripped out the impact of new store openings in the UK and Spain. Jeremy Batstone-Carr, analyst at Charles Stanley, estimated that Primark's like-for-like sales rose by 6%.

ABF said the weak pound had pushed up the cost of goods from America, resulting in a drop in gross margins at Primark. Sterling's weakness has helped other parts of ABF, though, making its sugar more competitive overseas. It also reported a 4% rise in sales at its grocery arm, whose brands include Twinings tea and Ovaltine.

Shares in ABF rose by 1.8% today, gaining 15.5p to 875p.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jan/14/primark-abf-clothing-sales

Activists rally the troops to save Twinings jobs
Tuesday 29 December 2009
by John Millington

Trade unionists and local politicians are stepping up the campaign to save hundreds of jobs at the profitable Twinings tea company with a public meeting in the new year, it has been announced.

There has been a huge outcry over the potential job losses, which could devastate Andover and North Shields in North Tyneside.

Despite the fact that Twinings and its parent company Associated British Foods (ABF) remain hugely profitable - making £56 million last year - 263 jobs are under threat at North Shields and 129 workers are due to be axed from the Andover plant.

The firm hopes to shift production to its plants in China and Poland.

In order to keep up the pressure on Twinings and ABF, campaigners have forged alliances with every major union in the local area and representatives from the USDAW union, TUC and the local Labour Party will be speaking at the meeting, Save Twinings in UK campaign group said.

Among those addressing the meeting will be TUC regional secretary Megan Dobney, USDAW national organiser Mike Parsonage and Labour parliamentary candidate Sarah Evans. Local sections of various unions have lent their solidarity to the tea workers, including FBU, PCS, RMT, Unison and Unite.

Hayes and Harlington MP John McDonnell has also pledged his support to the tea staff, tabling an early day motion calling for the government to intervene to prevent Twinings from making the cuts.

Mr McDonnell insisted that the government must intervene to prevent the offshoring of jobs. "The ability of employers to offshore work during the recession should act as a wake-up call to government, which must now intervene to protect jobs."

Local North Tyneside MP Stephen Byers said: "The proposed closure of this plant must be resisted. We simply cannot afford to lose this number of jobs."

Adding her voice to a chorus of support for the workers, Green Party leader and South East MEP Caroline Lucas said: "We must send a strong message to Associated British Foods that its plans to drop 400 Twinings workers in Andover and North Shields are unacceptable."

The public meeting is due to take place at Andover's Guildhall on Tuesday January 19 at 7.30pm.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/85004

Was it ever thus...

Lei Xue

2010-01-17T19:12:00.005Z

Also at the London Art Fair, insurers & sponsors Brownhill were running a competition to win a signed print by Basil Beattie, which asked the question "What was the insured value of the six porcelain 'cans' by Chinese artist Lei Xue (before they were damaged)"...Apparently the delicately hand-painted cans had been mistaken for litter by cleaners at a London gallery, "summarily binned" and then "retrieved the next day after a frantic search, a number of them cracked sadly beyond repair". It was great to see the actual pieces on display and a shame the prize was a measley Beattie print and not the cans themselves. (Image courtesy of AXA Art).

Yee Sookyung

2010-01-17T18:43:00.011Z

Seen at London Art Fair yesterday...Korean artist Yee Sookyung from her "Translated Vases" series, at Union's stall. Was thinking along similar lines.
"...the newest works are her Translated Vase series which are sculpture composed of pieces derived from actual ceramic works, but the finished product of her work is something unfamiliar and unusual. The method she uses to attach the pieces together correspond to the restoration of valuable ancient ceramics and these works are distinctive in the sense that they allow the viewer to become mindful of notions of the what is highly valued versus what is abandoned, what is historical versus what is modern, and what is art versus what is non-art. The artist questions the viewers as to who is the artist. The act of the ceramists destroying their failed works can be read as cliché in a sense of an artist wanting a flawless piece of work but at the same time it is also a gesture of contributing scarcity to commonly made ceramics. On the other hand, the artist’s act of collecting the broken pieces to make a new piece of work, and the circus acrobat (featured in the artist's drawings) trying her best not to break the ceramics can be seen as the exact opposite gesture of the ceramists."

Text excerpted from ONE AND J. catalogue essay by Kim Hee Kyung (2006)

Lost something in translation I reckon. I could've paraphrased this but no one would've paid me for it.

http://www.oneandj.com/gallery/ex_about.php?exhibition_no=25

Spode Buffalo Pattern

2009-12-16T12:20:00.004Z

Spode Staffordshire antique blue & white pottery: Boy on a Buffalo Pattern Pearlware Plate c.1795-1800
Image found at www.antiqueblueandwhite.co.uk

Identification

2009-12-16T12:01:00.005Z

My new friend Emma took some tiny fragments of ceramic from my World In Pieces (aka China Blues) installation at Creekside Centre to show her parents who are keen amateur experts in porcelain & earthenware. She recently brought back the fragments which her folks had identified and labelled for me...accompanied by a paper written by the Morden Ceramic Circle about the 'Buffalo Pattern', a strange variant of the Willow Pattern...

Christmas 2009

2009-12-16T11:42:00.005Z

I received my first Xmas card from Debra...a charity card from Waterstone's featuring a Hiroshige Utagawa (1797-1858) print 'Drum Bridge and Setting Sun at Meguro'...Very thoughtful.
She sent it at the beginning of December, but I'm posting it up today because we're just having our first snow of the season...
Photo © Roger Nyle

The Sorcerers

2009-11-11T19:26:00.006Z

Stayed up late the other night to watch this 1967 horror classic by Michael Reeves and starring Boris Karloff...The old couple in the film have a large dresser full of Willow Pattern...watch this segment on YouTube – the plates appear about 9 minutes in!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7cg6JZ04ZA

Whatever happened to the teapots?

2009-11-11T18:37:00.004Z

The Beeb are broadcasting a short series on the potteries. In "Whatever Happened to the Teapots?" Roger Law of Spitting Image fame goes back to Stoke where the team had their merchandising made (Margaret Thatcher teapots)...unfortunately it's not a podcast, but Law has written here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8350518.stm

Episode 3: "We started off by knocking off the Chinese. The original ceramics were copies of Chinese ware..."
"Until 1800ish, most people got their tableware from the Far East, then a 200-year hiccup in history when we did it, and now most people get their tableware from the Far East..."

Trevor Kiernander

2009-10-20T21:18:00.003+01:00

I was recently overcome by acquisitiveness at this year's Goldsmiths MA Show, and bought a drawing by Trevor Kiernander (in the picture above, from left to right, the third one along the top). I am pleased to hear he is now going to be showing in the Xmas show at Bearspace, and will have his own show there in January.

See his website here.

More Frieze

2009-10-20T21:09:00.010+01:00

Again, apologies to artists for lack of credits, except Cornelia Parker's flattened silverware at the top, which this photo doesn't do justice to...

Frieze Art Fair

2009-10-20T20:42:00.008+01:00

Some naff pix taken on my camera phone at Frieze of some of the things I liked. Unfortunately I am unable to credit the artists...except for the plates which is Richard Wentworth (Goldsmiths lecturer, class of 79)...

Cai Guo Qiang

2009-10-20T19:08:00.006+01:00

During Open Studios at Deptford X I had a visit from Amanda Francis (one of the DX committee) who told me of her trip to the Guggenheim in Bilbao earlier in the year where she had seen the work of an artist whose name she couldn't remember. She described it as a giant shipwreck spilling lots of broken china...

So I looked it up. Another fantastic Chinese artist, Cai Guo Qiang. I found a review here. The reviewer (Beth S. Gersh-Nesic) says of the piece: "Reflection-A Gift from Iwaki (2004), is the most sublime work of twenty-first century art, to date. An enormous excavated wooden boat, found in Iwaki, Japan, the hull is filled with and spills out buckets and buckets of mostly white (some light blue) Chinese porcelain figurines, dishes and other common vessels. Its gargantuan scale feels vaguely mythic, as if it came from the bowels of Davy Jones' locker or a Spielbergian movie set. Surely, the most indelible image of the entire show."

Cai Guo Qiang is best known for his pyrotechnics however, and was the Director of Visual and Special Effects for the opening and closing ceremonies in Beijing's 2008 Olympic Games, which of course were so impressive that British viewers twittered that it was all done with CGI.

Cai Guo Qiang's own site: www.caiguoqiang.com

See a video (and others) made of the Guggenheim show here.

Deptford X 2009 : The Tagworts Map

2009-09-29T18:58:00.009+01:00

Click here.

Deptford X 2009 : Open Studios

2009-09-29T18:57:00.006+01:00

"Inspired by Dance", Deptford X 2009

2009-09-29T11:33:00.007+01:00

I made a piece to go into the Arthub Group Show "AHA!" upstairs at 5-9 Creekside, which chronicles the past and imagines the future, using photographs of the view from my balcony at home of the old Deptford Power Station as was in 1980. By 1990, only the tower remained and Canary Wharf had been built. In 2000, the tower has gone and Canary Wharf is joined by two more buildings. By 2010, the new 'Creekside Village' will be complete, and by 2020 I am guessing the view will have changed out of all recognition.

"Inspired By Dance", Deptford View 1980–2020.
Inkjet on aluminium (5 pieces 227x150mm each)
© Sue Lawes 2009

"Inspired by Dance" is the plagarising PR tagline for 'Creekside Village', situated as it is towering over the Laban Dance building.

China Blues inadvertently at Deptford X 2009

2009-09-29T11:24:00.007+01:00

Painter Mich Maroney and poet Susan Mackeroy are presenting a sequence of paintings and poems at Creekside Centre, entitled Deptford Quatrains. It's a nice little show.

This means the centre is open and visitors must pass my outdoor piece for last year's Deptford X (as chronicled in this here blog), China Blues.

We have let the weeds grow on the piece (having filled it with fertile mud from the Creek) and the Pink Posse found Hoary Mustard (Hirschfeldia Incana) growing and tagged it.

Deptford X 2009 - Alchemy at Cor Blimey Arts

2009-09-29T11:13:00.008+01:00

Alchemy

Deptford Network of Artists ( DNA )
Saturday & Sunday 26/27 September, 3/4 October, 11am-5pm
Cor Blimey Arts, C101 Faircharm Trading Estate, Deptford, London SE8 3DX

An exhibition by artists of DNA (Deptford Network of Artists) about transformation: turning base metal into gold; elevating the material world into another; the aspirational world. It will include ‘The Alchemical Banquet’, a wedding feast for the eyes. This will be a collaborative work exploring the relationship between the art object, its creators and consumers through alchemical eyes.

www.corblimeyarts.com

Deptford X 2009 - Alchemy

2009-09-22T21:56:00.007+01:00

DNA (Deptford Artists Network) have devised a collaborative show called 'The Alchemical Banquet', as part of an open submission for DNA artists called 'Alchemy'.

The banquet idea was too good to miss: artworks to fit into a place setting (on a table) of approximately 35cmx35cm.

I finally finished "Creekside Willow With Vultures", submitted it for the show and await to see it arranged on a table with other artists' contributions...

I had other ideas for presenting this piece, but that can come later.

Creekside Willow With Vultures
Permanent marker on plastic plate
© Sue Lawes 2009

Deptford X : 25 September – 4 October 2009 : TAGWORTS

2009-09-22T21:09:00.011+01:00

It's that time of year again.

For this year's Deptford X I have been collaborating with a certain botanist on a project called TAGWORTS. We have been 'tagging' the wild flowers (weeds, to you) with their English (common) and Latin names all over Deptford. My botanist identified several species which may or may not be in flower over the coming weeks and I designed some stencils which we are using with pink and yellow liquid chalk aerosols (sorry, but at least they are water soluable)...

As we have gone along, tramping the streets of Deptford, we have tagged and then photographed the various species, and plotted them on a Google map of the area, with descriptions of the plants. I have tried to steer the botanist to the venues where there will be art shows and installations, but he is drawn to the neglected areas that weeds love best...so we've covered a lot of ground.

See the map developing here.

Here are a couple of pix:

Lei Xue

2009-07-31T16:25:00.005+01:00

Li Xiaofeng

2009-07-31T15:50:00.007+01:00

Maria Clemen sent me this link...thanks Maria!

© Virginia Miller Gallery

"Beijing artist Li Xiaofeng creates clothing from porcelain fragments from the Ming, Qing and Song dynasties and even more amazing are that they are wearable."

More here...
http://arrestedmotion.com/2009/06/art-focus-li-xiaofeng/
and here...
http://www.hongart.net/?option=art&collectionid=6&single=true

© beauty-reality

Glorious Mud

2009-06-21T20:13:00.009+01:00

Crikey, it's been a while.

Art has been taking a back seat to work and politics. New design work can be seen at www.fivetonine.co.uk. The politics has been about challenging Lewisham Council on their hike in service charges for leaseholders on my housing estate – very time consuming.

A couple of months ago I thought about dismantling my China Blues piece at Creekside Centre. But we decided to cover it in mud instead and see what grew from the fertile sludge. Here's Kate Coss, manager of the centre, having just splattered the world (and herself)...

Since then, a few wild flowers (weeds to you) have popped up, but the mud has dried out quite a lot.

Meanwhile, have just completed proposals for this year's Deptford X which is coming round again in September 2009. Whether I get to be part of the programme or not, it is time to make some stuff.

Also, there is now a Deptford Art Map:
http://www.deptfordartmap.com/
A few locations on Creekside are missing, but no doubt this will be rectified in due course...

Creekside Open

2009-03-07T20:23:00.014Z

I finally got round to making my own version of the Willow Pattern. It's been fermenting for a while, but delayed in execution. I was trying to get hold of some round ready-made canvases but Cornelisson's who usually sell them were out of stock. I was also thinking of hanging out at Ceramic Biscuit Cafe in Greenwich and drawing a plate there and have them fire it...

With the deadline for submissions to the Creekside Open (www.creeksideopen.org/) approaching fast (last weekend), I found myself, three days before the deadline, helping friends with their submissions (getting images onto CD) but was undecided over what I would submit if anything. The artist Mark Wallinger is one of the judges. Wallinger won the Turner Prize in 2007 (www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/wallinger/).

The thought that Wallinger, of all people, might actually get what I've been doing made me get off my arse and begin my Creekside Willow. I nipped off down the high street and bought some white plates (paper, plastic and ceramic) in all the pound shops. The last pound shop I tried sold the perfect plate - big enough for an image and beautifully plain. At the newsagents I bought some blue permanent markers. These worked fine on the plastic surface and I transferred a drawing I'd been working on (with the help of collaging images on the computer) to the plate.

It turned out a bit wonky, but then the original Willow isn't exact either. It's an idealised version too - some buildings are still under construction and there should be more of them. Plus the two churches (St Paul's in Deptford and St Alfege's in Greenwich) ought to be in there...and there are no people on the bridge...

Creekside Willow With Vultures 30cmx30cm Plastic plate with felt tip

The plate was finished the night before the deadline day, but I still hadn't invented a border for the plate, so I got in touch with Nick Bertram at Creekside Centre and obtained some Creek mud...I was remembering seeing plates half buried in the mud in the Creek.

The mud links into the subject of the Creek, mud as clay, and the potteries that used to be here. I donned waders and dipped the plate in...

Creekside Willow With Vultures and Creek Mud

I took a bucket of mud back to the studio with me to set up a different presentation. If presented in a gallery, the mud would dry out, so I didn't really get it how I wanted it here - it's still wet and there wasn't enough of it.

I also tried presenting the plate on a Chinoiserie-style wallpaper sample that I'd picked up recently from B&Q. This gave me the idea of redrawing the wallpaper to show the pale pastoral scenes as more contemporary, but there wasn't time to do this.

The deadline was at 5pm on the Saturday and I made it with minutes to spare. Submissions were to be handed in at the APT Gallery where there was a show on of three female artists. One of these artists, Toni McGreachan, remarked on how many people had been into the gallery that day - she had counted over 70 - and most of them were delivering Creekside Open submissions.

The chances of being picked are next to zero, but I am glad that having the opportunity to enter gave me the impetus to start working on this idea...there's still some way to go: explore the contemporary Chinoiserie-style wallpaper idea, and work on a border (or ribbon) for the plate...perhaps made up of financial motifs like the Royal Bank of Scotland logo. RBS are one of the partners in the Creekside Village development. But the development is still going ahead; they seem to have completed the underground car park and are beginning the ground floor structure. You don't have three cranes on site if you're not doing anything.
www.thecreeksidevillage.com/index.html
I should really make more of those glass shards on my plate.

Joanne Kerr at A Cup of Tea Solves Everything

2009-03-07T19:43:00.003Z

I nearly forgot...one of the exhibits I like at the Cup of Tea show is funny little project by Joanne Kerr called TEA TALES, or Urban Wildlife: Tea Tales Picture Cards.

Joanne has printed up some little cards like the ones we used to get in packets of tea, plus a little booklet to stick them in. Rather than the pictures of birds and other animals that people used to collect (which had information about the species on the back), she has photographed the humble polystyrene cup in a variety of guises (decorated or with props) to resemble people in the urban environment. For instance, there are characters like The Therapist (the cup has two large handles attached which resemble huge ears), or The Builder (the cup is hodcarrying sugar lumps with a plastic spoon), The Gardener, The Hairdresser, and my favourite, The Gangster. The Gangster (gangsteramus) is black with a handle attached in the shape of knuckle dusters.

The Gardener (hortis planetarium) cup is decorated with a dark green pattern and its description reads: "a true native of England but it has been introduced into several other countries where, as it is a virile and adaptive species, it has thrived. It is regarded as a pest by the common slug for it is tenacious in its quest for food and does not take well to competition. It is most often seen in spring and summer. At first it stands erect but later droops."

Most of the work in the show is light hearted. I seem to be the only one weighed down by the history of tea.