AN EXPLORATION OF IMPERMANENCE IN CONTEMPORARY CERAMIC ART PRACTICE SARAH E. C. GEE A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Sunderland for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2016 i AN EXPLORATION OF IMPERMANENCE IN CONTEMPORARY CERAMIC ART PRACTICE ABSTRACT This practice-led research investigates clay-based impermanent creativity, exploring this means of expression as a contribution to knowledge in the expanded field of contemporary ceramic art practice. The research considers recent developments in innovative work by practitioners from the ceramic tradition, characterised by unconventional uses of material, natural decay and weathering, deliberate destruction, performance and physicality. A key aspect of the research exploration is phenomenographic alignment of personal praxical development with that of contemporaries sharing backgrounds in the ceramic tradition. A case study approach based on a reflexive Schönian and Kolbian cycle is utilised and research material is viewed from trans-disciplinary perspectives to explore and elucidate its nature, impacts and implications. Impermanence in clay is found to de-familiarise art work, altering and enhancing the creative role of percipients. Relationships between work, maker and percipient are explored. Mediatisation of impermanent clay-based art is considered for its impact on work’s reception and interpretation. A perceptible shift is detected in such art practice from the arena of visual art towards that of performance, moving artist and audience relationships towards shared ownership in ceramic creativity, in which co-presence of work and percipient are essential. Aspects of relational aesthetics offer a cogent framework. Consideration is given to clay’s shared significance with other basic materials such as textile in holding meaning beyond its physicality. The thesis contributes to the discourse on methodological frameworks for practice-led research and to academic writing on contemporary ceramic art in its exploration of clay-based impermanence, encompassing maker intentionality, material alteration and destruction, site/location and significance, performativity and unrepeatability, and record. It provides a transferable research model for considering creative impermanence. Areas identified for further research include artist/audience relationships and the nature of creativity, the role of location, performativity as an aspect of contemporary practice, and curation of performance and impermanence. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am very grateful to the British education system for the opportunities it has offered to pursue this research; to the University of Sunderland for ‘employing' me for longer than any other institution in my life; to its information service, particularly the staff in the gone-but-not-forgotten Ashburne Library, for providing texts and advice; to the Department of Glass and Ceramics for being my home base and to its academic and technical staff for sharing their wisdom, knowledge and skills; and to every practitioner, educator and trainer who has supported my research learning. I owe particular thanks to: Peter Davies and Jack Dawson, for encouraging me to consider undertaking a doctorate in the first place, and my examiners for their guidance and advice My case study subjects for their willingness to be interrogated (some of them repeatedly) and their openness in answering questions The curators, both formal and informal, who have generously welcomed my installations and ideas Fellow doctoral students with whom I have shared the research journey Maggie Barnes, Peter Harvey, John Fulton, Charlie Poulsen and Maggie Smith for their mentorship Hem Boral, Rik Hammond, Robert Holman, Wenying Li, Denise Lilley, Veronica Newman, Njalsdottir and Rob Winter for their generous contributions to my practice development during the research period Claude Frere-Smith (Teesside, England), George Georgiadis (Paphos, Cyprus), Mwanaisha (Nkotakhota, Malawi) and Mansimran Singh (Andretta, India) for sharing their pottery skills with me The patient and meticulous readers of draft chapters My Director of Studies, Andrew Livingstone, and supervisory team, Jack Dawson and Colin Rennie, who have encouraged and challenged me to give of my best. My husband and family, who have my heartfelt gratitude. I would not have completed the doctorate without their unwavering tolerance, encouragement, support and belief in my ability to achieve it. ii CONTENTS TITLE PAGE ABSTRACT i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii LIST OF: CONTENTS iii TABLES vi DIAGRAMS vi FIGURES vii APPENDICES ix ABBREVIATIONS: GENERAL x CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF OWN REFERENCED WORK x ABBREVIATIONS: CONTEMPORARY REFERENCED WORK xi DEFINITIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS xii PROLOGUE 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 7 1.1 OVERVIEW: 8 1.1.1 Start point 8 1.1.2 Identifying similarities with 10 contemporaries 1.2 RESEARCH ISSUES 13 1.2.1 Clay as research material 13 1.2.2 Personal practice development 14 1.3 RESEARCH TITLE 17 1.4 RESEARCH AIMS 18 1.5 PROPOSITIONS 19 1.6 MOTIVATION FOR THE RESEARCH 20 1.6.1 Early Practice 20 1.6.2 Developing practice in the research 21 context 1.7 ARTICULATING PRAXIS 24 1.7.1 Developing focus 24 1.7.2 Articulating praxis 25 1.8 THE RESEARCH FOCUS 29 1.9 PRACTICE AND THESIS: 30 1.9.1 Practice element and theoretical argument 30 1.9.2 Writing style and use of personal pronouns 31 1.9.3 Thesis outline 32 CHAPTER 2 CONTEXTUALISING IMPERMANENCE IN CONTEMPORARY CERAMIC ART PRACTICE 33 2.1 INTRODUCTION 33 2.2 CONTEMPORARY MODELS 35 2.2.1 Ceramic research projects 36 2.2.2 Other models, other messages 43 2.3 RE:LOCATION 45 iii 2.3.1Shifting from the gallery: events 46 2.3.2 Shifting from the gallery: environmental art 47 2.4 2.4 CONVERGENCES AND CONSONANCES 48 2.4.1 Western and Eastern aesthetic 48 divergence 2.4.2 Consonances: Cage and Ono 49 2.5 IMPERMANENCE, THE PRACTITIONER AND 50 VALUE 2.6 PERFORMANCE AND PERFORMATIVITY 51 2.7 IMPLICATIONS OF IMPERMANENT ARTISTIC EXPRESSION 53 2.8 ISSUES OF ARTISTIC IMPERMANENCE 55 CHAPTER 3 APPROACH AND RESEARCH METHOD 57 3.1 INTRODUCTION 57 3.2 TRANS-DISCIPLINARY FRAMEWORK 58 3.2.1 Rationale and chosen approach 58 3.2.2 Conceptual sources 59 3.3 PRACTICE-LED RESEARCH 64 3.4 METHODOLOGY 66 3.4.1 The reflective practitioner and Kolb’s learning cycle 66 3.4.2 The cyclical approach, reflexivity and phenomenography 67 3.5 CASE STUDY APPROACH 70 3.6 DATA GATHERING 72 3.6.1 Practical experimentation and analysis 72 3.6.2 Data gathering: interviews 74 3.6.3 Data gathering: secondary research 76 CHAPTER 4 IMPERMANENCE 79 4.1 INTRODUCTION 79 4.1.1 What is ceramic impermanence? 79 4.1.2 Classifying contemporary ceramic impermanence 85 4.2 ISSUES OF CLASSIFICATION 92 4.2.1 Inclusion/exclusion 92 4.2.2 Intention and motive in creating impermanent work 94 4.2.3 Recording impermanence 95 4.2.4 Retaining artistic integrity 97 4.3 CHARACTERISING ‘IMPERMANENCE’ 98 4.3.1 Impermanent or not? 100 4.4 IMPERMANENCE IN PRACTICE 101 4.5 REFLEXION ON IMPERMANENCE 105 CHAPTER 5 MATERIALITY AND MEANING 108 5.1 INTRODUCTION 108 5.2 CLAY AS SOCIAL AND AESTHETIC FRAME 113 5.3 PERCEPTIONS OF CLAY 119 5.3.1 Stability 119 5.3.2 Re-viewing material 120 iv 5.3.3 Animated clay 121 5.4 EXPLOITING THE MUTABILITY OF CLAY 123 5.4.1 Purposes for impermanence 125 5.5 DRAWING CONCLUSIONS 126 5.6 REFLEXION ON MATERIAL AND MEANING 130 CHAPTER 6 SITING WORK: CITING MEANING 132 6.1 INTRODUCTION 132 6.1.1 Engagement with place 133 6.1.2 Categorising location 134 6.2 ROLES OF PLACE IN PERSONAL PRACTICE 137 6.2.1 Place and record 139 6.2.2 Place and access 144 6.2.3 Place and history 145 6.2.4 Place and material 148 6.3 MEANINGS AND DEFINITIONS 149 6.3.1 Defining and illustrating ‘site’ 150 6.4 REFLEXION ON SITING 156 CHAPTER 7 FROM PLINTH TO PERFORMANCE 158 7.1 INTRODUCTION 158 7.2 MOVING FROM THE GALLERY 162 7.2.1 Impermanence and intent 165 7.2.2 Ceramic presence 173 7.2.3 Revisiting materiality 178 7.2.4 Revisiting location 182 7.3 THE EVENT AESTHETIC AND MATERIALITY 186 7.4 REFLEXION ON THE SHIFT TO PERFORMANCE 188 CHAPTER 8 RECORD AND THE RESEARCH 190 IMPERATIVE 8.1 INTRODUCTION 190 8.2 RECORDING INSTALLATION WORK 192 8.3 SHIFTING TO AN EVENT AESTHETIC 198 8.4 EVIDENCE VERSUS EXPERIENCE 200 8.5 REFLEXION ON RECORD AND EVIDENCE 203 CHAPTER 9 PRACTICE TO PRAXIS 204 9.1 THE RESEARCH PROGRAMME 204 9.2 EMERGENT ASPECTS OF PRACTICE 205 9.3 WORKING WITH IMPERMANENCE 213 9.3.1 Roles for the artist 213 9.3.2 Site-sensitivity 214 9.3.3 Audience and engagement 216 9.3.4 Impacts of impermanence 217 9.3.5 Record and trace 218 9.3.6 Mixing materials 220 9.3.7 Impermanence and agency 220 9.4 STATEMENT OF PRAXIS 223 9.5 REFLEXION ON DEVELOPING PRAXIS 225 CHAPTER 10 FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS 227 10.1 REVIEW OF RESEARCH AIMS 227 10.1.1 Research aims 228 v 10.1.2 Considering research propositions 228 10.2 RESEARCH CONCLUSIONS 229 10.2.1 Features of ceramic impermanence 229 10.2.2 Classifying ceramic impermanence 230 10.3 CHARACTERISING IMPERMANENCE IN CONTEMPORARY CERAMIC ART PRACTICE 231 10.3.1 (Lack of) evidence 232 10.4 DEVELOPMENT OF PRAXIS 232 10.5 CONTRIBUTIONS TO KNOWLEDGE 233 10.6 AREAS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 235 CODA 237 REFERENCES 238 APPENDICES 247 TABLES Table Title Page 3.A Artist case study subjects 71 3.B Curator case study subjects 72 4.A Classification system for impermanent ceramic art 86 4.B Classification system applied to works referenced in text 90 6.A Locations for research-related work 137 8.A Recording personal practice 191 DIAGRAMS Diagram Title Page 2.1 Rosalind Krauss: Klein group diagram