Re-Apprenticed: Observation. Performed at - Raphael Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The V&A invited Brownsword to develop the site-specific iteration of Re-apprenticed, through a live performance located in their Raphael Gallery. Here he illuminated the haptic knowledge of redundant ceramic industrial craft practices alongside High Renaissance treasures. The performances were part of the V&A’s ‘Potteries’ Friday Late program which celebrated ceramic manufacture in North Staffordshire (2618 visits). https://www.valentineclays.co.uk/news/va-museum-friday-night-late-potteries.

Re-apprenticed comprised of three performances by a china flower maker, copperplate engraver and a plaster modeller by former industry artisans. Brownsword’s disruptive interventions amplified the intimate spaces of hand/tool/material interactions through projected imagery, and larger than domestic scale demonstrations of industry know how. Performances accentuated nuances of touch, material knowledge and timing associated with explicit craft knowledge. Jennifer Zielinska the V&A’s Friday Late Programme Coordinator stated, ‘Re- apprenticed was unlike anything we have done before at Friday Late… It was truly majestic and really very special’ (email 2 Nov 2015).