FACTORY

Awarded as part of his Grand Prize at the 2015 GICB, this solo exhibition consolidated much of Brownsword’s research into North Staffordshire’s ceramic intangible heritage, on a prestigious international platform. It involved six performances by ex-industry artisans and Korean master potters, whose indigenous ceramic practices were choreographed by Brownsword to disrupt the routines of prescriptive skill and reactivate artefacts salvaged from Stoke-on-Trent’s post-industrial legacy. Two looped films (2016) that document this period of industrial change, juxtaposed demonstrations of ceramic ‘know-how’ against a survey of former sites of production. Films were silent in the exhibition - to access:

Six Towns part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUNTPVRxLic&feature=youtu.be
Six Towns part 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBD6Gs3eqxk&feature=youtu.be

As South Korea formally recognises UNESCO’s convention to safeguard Intangible Cultural Heritage (unlike the UK), FACTORY explored the integration of opposing hierarchies of cultural production to re-negotiate a sense of value to people and practices displaced by global economics. Knowledge exchange between these two distinct traditions offered new insights into the reciprocal phenomenon of cultural transfer between East and West prevalent in ceramic history. By ‘instilling inquiry with ethical sensitivity’ through his innovative methods of reinvigorating obsolescence, Brownsword’s factory of ‘knowledge production, tactile pleasure and non-commercialised materials lay counter to the rampant exploitation of most artists and factories’ (Shales).

Visitor numbers to Icheon World Ceramic Centre, where FACTORY was staged, were approx. 125,764. Korea Ceramic Foundation (KOCEF) disseminated FACTORY through a broad range of materials printed in Korean and English, including a publication by esteemed scholars (Strangleman and Shales) which offered critical discourse of the research journey.