Sarah Christie

Ceramics in Relationship to Collaboration: material reciprocity as a generative model

September 24, 2021

Summary:

Ceramics in Relationship to Collaboration

Select Readings:

The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents by Clare Bishop

Thinking across disciplinary boundaries in a time of crisis by Roger Kneebone

Collaboration Through Craft by Alive Kettle, Amanda Ravetz, and Helen Felcey

Discussion Guide:

Ceramics in Relationship to Collaboration

About the topic

Working in clay means that we make things from clay. But we also make with clay. The material speaks back to us: at first imperceptibly, eventually loudly if we enter into an open dialogue with it. Could this mindset of listening and ‘making-with' lay fertile ground for collective and collaborative practice? 

At their best, collaborations move past the notion of the singular hero-artist, acting instead as a kind of open container where ideas, actions, and processes can mix and multiply. The collective approach can facilitate play, increase the scale of our endeavors, redistribute power, and minimize limitations (real, perceived, material, and geographic). Yet these models also carry risk and uncertainty. How do we effectively use the tactic of 'making-with’ to bolster constructive criticality and creative growth?

Using examples from Sarah Christie’s practice, as well as participants’ global experiences, this conversation will explore how and why collaboration could expand ceramic practice for ourselves, each other, and our field.

About the Lead Artist

Sarah Christie is a UK-based artist and educator working in clay. She is interested in the entangled and sensorial relationship we have with clay, and the tension between clay as resource, relic, and ongoing geological process. Not everything becomes a finished piece of work, but instead contributes to a longer, emergent process of revealing and informing. Recent work has been site-specific and ephemeral, often collaborative, sometimes inviting public participation. In 2019 she showed a large public work in London’s Southwark Cathedral. In 2020 she co-founded ‘Small Acts of Being’ with artist Heather Barnett, focused on making time and space for experimentation and play. Her most recent show this summer was as part of the collective Associated Clay Workers Union in London.

Sarah is Associate Lecturer on the ceramics program at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, and visiting artist and supervisor at Imperial College London Medical School. She also leads visual arts and creative reflection workshops in public and educational spaces.