Alchemy and Metamorphosis in Tangible World: New Social Dynamics in Ceramics, 9th Taiwan Ceramic Biennale 2022

Tangible World: New Social Dynamics in Ceramics
As the world faces unprecedented challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2022 Taiwan Ceramics Biennale (TCB) place focus on ceramic practices which have both old and new aspects that continuously interact with our civilization and way of life, more importantly, asking questions and observations on how ceramic art may become a new social momentum. The biennale aims to provide the local area with nutrients through a diverse, sustainable and innovative perspective. The exhibition includes not only functional ceramics that discusses matters from our daily life, but also provides an important platform for artists from around the world to express their ideas and concerns for the international society.

The biennale is organized by New Taipei City Yingge Ceramics Museum (YCM), along with domestic and foreign consultants. The 2022 TCB, Tangible World: The New Social Dynamics in Ceramics, showcases 72 sets of works by 47 artists from 12 countries, which are categorized into four subtopics: “Tracing – The Ceramic Journey,” “Amorphous – Interpretation of Nature,” “Metamorphosis – Material Philosophy,” “Taking Shape – Connections in the World,” accumulating a broad scope of contemporary ceramic art. Each subtopic is connected to essence of various regional developments in ceramic art, with the hope of expanding possibilities for international community through promoting ceramic art, techniques and knowledge.

Neil Brownsword's Alchemy and Metamorphosis was invited as a selected exhibition, representing the UK in the 2022 Taiwan Ceramics Biennale to explore themes of place. This comprised of three multi media works:

Abstract: Alchemy and Metamorphosis
The recovery and analysis of past material culture through a reengagement with archives, obsolete technologies has pre-occupied much contemporary art in recent decades. Since 2003, Neil Brownsword’s artistic practice has explored a similar sense of historical revisionism, whereby he attempts to reveal and construct new insights into explicit knowledge associated with marginalised industrial crafts. Articulated in response to recent decades of deindustrialisation in North Staffordshire’s ceramic sector, it raises questions surrounding the value and contemporary relevance of intergenerational skills cultivated by instruction, and how these can be elicited and regenerated into new modes of expression through their transmission and acquisition.

Externalising the Archive 1 & 2 (2021) explores the material remnants of Stoke-on-Trent’s post-industrial legacy - a world-renowned ceramic capital that has experienced significant decline in recent decades. Fragmentary casts from redundant historic moulds emphasise overlooked systems of craft knowledge held by a rapidly disappearing culture of labour, impacted by policies of global outsourcing and the advances of production technology. To convey metaphors of absence and loss domestic forms are deliberately dismantled and disordered to deny representation. The works formal appropriation of museum taxonomies of archaeological shards, signals attention to a regional heritage that remains in danger of becoming a relic of the industrial past.

Factory (2022), with Rita Floyd Bone china, looped film (34 mins)
China flower making is one of the few methods of mass production that relies completely upon the dexterity of the hand. With changing fashion and the impact of globalisation, this industry in Stoke-on-Trent has all but disappeared, with Rita Floyd being amongst the last of a generation of artisans who retain this skill. Throughout Factory Rita is hired to re-enact her former working practices, but her routine of achieving her end goal is idisrupted by Brownsword’s instruction for her to discard whatever she makes. The resultant waste that accrues, becomes a symbolic and political gesture to draw attention to the UK’s failure to protect its intangible cultural heritage.