
Rationale
Wedge explores connections, collaborations, and divisions within the increasingly sophisticated practices of ceramic artists today.
How is our ability to manipulate, process, and transform environmental materials and elemental forces continually reshaping our world and our position within it?
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That which connects us, that which supports us, that which divides us.
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Wedge aims to identify and interrogate the increasingly complex interactions between ceramic practice and current ethical, aesthetic, personal, and environmental concerns.
WEDGE \weʤ\
verb.
to connect
Mixing and blending pottery clay by kneading, cutting, and throwing down to remove air pockets and make homogeneous
verb.
to support
A solid substance with one thick end tapering to a thin edge that provides balance, support, stability, and security
noun.
to divide
Something with a thin edge that is used to divide and separate thoughts, objects, or materials.
TREATISE
Ceramic objects connect us. They allow us to mix socially by both their use and containment. They act as a platform for social interaction and express cultural ideas and aesthetic considerations.
The making of ceramics requires both knowledge and skills. Sharing and practising these provide meaning and an outlet for the aesthetic dimension in our lives. The act of making is a way to express an individual’s personality.
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Ceramic objects transcend the mechanical and the virtual. Spaces may act as conduits to meaning and understanding of cultural similarities and differences.
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Ceramic practice supports human cultural life. We interact with ceramic objects in the daily consumption and the elimination of food and drink and in much of the architecture that we inhabit. They are integral to our existence.
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Indeed, clay is integral to life itself. Inorganic clay is formed as water erodes rock. The submicroscopic sheets and plates of clay molecules provide a moist slippery space for organic molecules to double in size and interact. In this way organic molecules can concentrate and react and thus enable life to grow. Many traditions posit the making of the first human beings from primordial clay.
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Yet, clay and ceramic objects may act as markers of difference and division. Ceramic practice is an ancient marker of the development of human civilizations and is coterminous with the development of agriculture and societies. It has changed human culture forever.
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The type of clay used in manufacture and daily use also signified divisions in entitlement and society in general. Types of clay and the context in which it is presented feeds the culturally constructed schism between what is considered art and that which is designated craft. Such divisions are often predicated on conceptual relationships between the body and the mind and how consciousness is generated.
DAILY THEMES
DAY 1: History and Civilisation
History is the study of past events and cultural expression, in this case, through the medium of clay and ceramics
· Political, economic, technological and social events influencing art, craft and cultural expression.
· Acknowledging traditions, welcoming innovation
· Hot topic: Artificial intelligence
· Place for traditional craft in contemporary settings
· Influences, inspirations, innovations and identities through clay.
DAY 2: Metaphor and Symbol
Symbols, much like metaphors, serve as bridges between the known and the abstract
· Reaching into the deeper realms of the human psyche; personal stories exploring dreams, fantasies, storytelling, religious and cultural symbols and images,
· The symbolic generation of the unconscious and spontaneous power or meaning in the world through the ceramic medium.
· The ‘fifth element’.
DAY 3: Sustainability and Well-being
Is Alchemy to Chemistry as Sustainability is to Business?
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Sustainable practices, recycling, reusing and reclaiming.
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How do we justify making more “stuff” in the overstuffed world?
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What is important and what sustains us physically and mentally?
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Education: how and what do we teach? art therapy, clay in the classroom and the importance of craft practice.
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Mental health, health and safety: Clay and the spiritual
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The business of ceramics and the relationship between industry and craft and making money from mud,
DAY 4: Chemistry and Alchemy
The roots of chemistry are in alchemy. The transformation and transmutation of materials through the application of knowledge and skills.
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The allure of the kiln gods, clay’s memory and the alchemy, the sense of adventure due to the excitement of the quest and the hope of discovering the precious ‘gold’, both literally and metaphorically in the ceramic process itself.
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Understanding glazes, chemical elements, dogmas, science, earth, water, fire and air.
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·Science, myth, habit and received wisdom and truth.
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·Empirical observation, experience, data, academic hypothesis and abstract theory.