Text from the British Ceramic Biennial catalogue 2019
Commissioned Public residency - part of the 2019 British Ceramic Biennial International Festival – Stoke-on-Trent
Project: Ceramic City Four Sites
World of Wedgwood
Hooson & Buttle
22 Hands, casting movement and shadows
Artists Duncan Hooson and Stephanie Buttle have come together to create 22 hands, an exhibition, performance, workspace and intervention at the World of Wedgwood factory and the award winning Wedgwood Museum.
For this site specific commission the artists took as their starting point a remarkable, exquisite, collection of works by the Stoke-on-Trent born sculpture Glenys Barton, which are displayed in the museum as part of the V&A’s collection. In 1976, during her time as artist in residence in the Wedgwood factory, Barton designed a number of cast sculptures and plates as a limited- edition production range of 26 works. These all responded to the human figure and were exhibited under the title ‘Man in Space’. Barton was known to have a keen interest in contemporary dance and its founder Rudolph Laban, who in 1947 introduced methods in factories to help workers edit tasks actions referred to as ‘shadow movements’.
The artists are transforming and animating an unused, anonymous courtyard, an indoor/outdoor space which currently links the factory with the Museum. Introducing physical structures, pools of slip, platforms of moulds, a clay tunnel and soundscapes, the space will be brought alive, acting as an immersive theatre of making as the artists research, rehearse and make visible their creative process and thinking for the public. Hooson and Buttle will be joined by the sound/text artist Tim Gray. Working closely together the artists will develop an audio sensory experience, including sound, text, found industrial machinery.
Working in the space on ‘three acts’ or stations the group of artists will draw in members of the public to witness and engage with them to celebrate material, process and actions.
The project enquiry throughout the residency will investigate the gestures, movements and production of the ceramic slip - casting process of 22 Hands – The number said to be involved in the process of producing a single item out of the factory floor.
The public are invited to engage with the developing residency and to leave their mark through the making of sprig-mould stamps to decorate the clay surfaces of the tunnel. The tunnel acts as a theatrical portal between the worlds of the Wedgwood corporate existence and the artists space.
For several days each week during the festival the artists will be present, enacting their creative process in the space. Evolving throughout the project Buttle will work with local Stoke choreographer Clare Reynolds (Restoke) and the public and young persons towards a series of choreographic dance sketches, these discoveries will be a response to Buttle’s research of physical gestural movements of ceramic manufacturing as well as the Laban techniques that Glenny’s Barton was so influenced by. This original dance and movement work will be developed, choreographed and performed publicly throughout the live event during the final weekend of the festival.
