Clay & Me Talking to L.B and the resulting series of “Essential” ceramics have been made in line with the exhibition Body Poetics: The exhibition commissioned by GIANT presents the pairing of nine feminist artists working at the advent of feminist theory in the 1970’s and 80’s with a contemporary artist from a younger generation. Curated by Marcelle Joseph and Becca Pelly-Fry, Body Poetics runs from 16 February – 6 May 2023.
Clay & Me Talking to L.B (2023) is a silent film that starts with an animated prologue. It reflects on both mine and Louise Bourgeois’ relationships to clay.
Bourgeois was a trailblazing female artist whose expansive career spanned seven decades, her canonical works are inevitably a point of refence for many female artists. The connection between my work and that of L.B’s is psychoanalysis as an active concern, regardless of form or medium the work in both cases is symptomatic.
Phillip Larratt-Smith’s brilliant two volume publication Louise Bourgeois | The Return Of The Repressed explores the artist’s profound relationship to psychoanalysis and her Notes are published for the first time. Bourgeois’s formal developments are traced through her extensive diaristic notes on her Freudian analysis with Lowenfeld. Likewise my weekly analysis is at the centre of my work. Sculpture (usually figurative) is a symptom. Making a new work that could sustain a conversation with Bourgeois’s about a psychoanalytical practice is at the root of my film.
Clay & Me Talking to L.B considers and questions why Bourgeois made so little work in clay, her glazed porcelain Janus (1968-77) and the Nature Study editions manufactured at Sevres are notable examples. Yet, she spoke about the material frequently, the clay is my mother The most conclusive reason that Bourgeois rejected clay was because, as she herself declared on film to Brigitte Cornand, that ‘it’s essential quality was breakability’. The constant struggle with fragility inherent in making ceramic works is conversely the hook for me, it is why I persist in trying to make work from mud.
In the animated prologue clay is described as the most bodily of all materials. Bourgeois smashed pottery for the camera in at least three of the seminal documentaries about her and for her the precariousness of ceramics was linked to family dynamics and bodily trauma. Clay & Me Talking to L.B pursues my needing to understand what ceramic’s inherent fragility means to me (having experienced a childhood home of smashed objects). At any given moment a work may break on me, why am I still pursuing a material that incorporates the violence? In making the film I learned what it meant to smash a sculpture, a powerful piece of knowledge. In my quest to understand the hysterical act of smashing things up the film witnesses the disintegration of a table full of sculpture which in turn forms a cosmic reflection.
A broken ceramic is something most of us will encounter at some point, I did not particularly enjoy the violent act of breaking my work, whereas I think Bourgeois in part revelled in smashing ceramics because this was a role her father (regularly) performed, she also understood full well what the act meant to her, domestically and artistically whereas I have only just worked out the real meaning for me behind the broken ceramic. Thank you Louise!
The results of the film’s breakages can be seen separately in a series of works called the Essentials in which a reparation place. Further works on show include Goddess of Things (2021) and Manu Fica (2021) which were made for my solo exhibition Reading Between the Lines at Sid Motion Gallery, an exhibition which centred on my memories of my childhood bed sheets. Like Bourgeois my childhood has not left me and perhaps I too refuse to let its memory go anywhere other than into the work.
Written and performed by Holly Stevenson
Produced by Charlie Gray and Holly Stevenson
Directed by Mars Washington
Edited by Jack Satchell
Graphics by Claire Breach
