making plastic clay (Unearthing project instructible)

collect clay - see previous post

grate the clay (or break lumps with hammer) & allow to dry

soak dried clay

sieve through fine mesh and spread on plaster bat

allow to dry overnight

plastic clay is now ready

remove from bat

allow plaster bat to dry out before reusing

mud to mud (Unearthing project / Walton-on-the-Naze)

I’ve started collecting London clay for Unearthing, a collaborative project with The People’s Bureau at Tate Modern and Stave Hill Ecological Park – see also previous posts.

A few months back we collected clay from the river bed near London Bridge. On this occaskion I collected some in a purer form on the beach at Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex. The Naze is a gorgeous and very unstable landscape, eroded by tidal waters which expose red crag and London clay, that is then reclaimed by the sea.

While collecting small lumps of clay strewn around the beach we came across bricks, yellow in colour, looking like traditional London brick. We also came across wall made from misshapen bricks, most probably rejects from a local brickery. The bricks were being washed out to sea, a 50+ million year old cycle was being looped - clay, shaped into bricks, fired, then becoming clay again... Ecology in action!

I walked back to the studio to process the clay and felt like a complete vandal when I started grating it in order to dry it. We soaked it, sieved it and dried it again, this time on a plaster bat to make plastic clay. 

Once the clay has been modelled, fired and pieces installed, I’ll simply have to walk back to the beach and throw the work in the water... I'm not one to get in the way of nature doing it's thing!

slippery foundations (Unearthing project / Nelson's Dock)

Unearthing, a project commissioned by Tate Exchange in partnership with The People’s Bureau and Stave Hill Ecological Park, involved a group of participants to walk from Stave Hill to the river. Our aim was to collect clay that would then be processed and modelled at Tate, then later pit-fired at the ecological park.

Instead of finding clay, we collected objects brought in and uncovered by recent tidal flows – metal objects used in ship building, bits of ceramic, slag from iron smelting on the river bank, general debris from London’s past colonial, trading and industrial history. A number of bricks, fired from the same clay we were looking for, were also found the river bed.

Objects were eventually used as inspiration and tools for modelling clay, later dug out from the park, that prompted also thoughts about their history, that of the city and the materials that built its foundations.

This was a focal point for discussions at Tate Modern, addressed within the context of regeneration and development at Elephant and Castle and London. 

More info on the project can be found on other posts on this blog as well as this and this link.

time to talk (Unearthing Project / Tate Exchange)

Here they are, images of the pilot event of Unearthing at Tate Modern on January 25^th, a collaboration between myself and The People’s Bureau in partnership with Tate Modern and Stave Hill Ecological Park.

Strangers holding hands while plaster, then dental alginate - safer apparently, health and safety gone mad if you ask me! - is poured into them. For the time it took for the plaster/alginate to set, these couples were committed to each other and engaged in conversation, prompted by short text read to them addressing issues around regeneration and foundation of the city. The cast were kept as mementoes of these conversations, together with notes written by the participants in response to the converstaions and activity.

time to talk

A few photos taken when Eva Sajovic and Corinne Silva paid me a visit in my old studio in New Cross, wanting help with casting Jaffa oranges for a project they are working on in Jordan. While the moulds were setting, Eva and I joined and cupped our hands for Corinne to pour plaster in. 

The plaster started to set and heat up while we stood still and faced each other. When it started cooling was an indicator it was set and we released our hands.

During the time it took for this to happen, roughly 15minutes, we discussed the possibility doing this as an activity for the pilot event at Tate Exchange of Unearthing, a collaborative project between The People’s Bureau and me. Strangers would commit to holding hands while waiting for the mould to set, prompting conversations that would be recorded. Off now to find the images of the actual event...

 

hands on and back again...

 

While sifting through photos, full of renewed commitment to post most regularly on this blog, I’ve come across these images. They were taken at Raversijde in Oostende, with the participants with who helped me create the performative installation Score for the Atlantic Wall, part of the exhibition Private Tag.

We spent the morning taking the piece down, and in the afternoon rehearsed ways of working the material, exploring ideas for producing a new piece with it.

 

As usual, things happened real fast and by surprise. Yours truly luckily managed to record some of the action with these few shots. The aim is now to find means of exploring this further, possibly at the same site. Read about it here a few posts from now…