Ceramic objects are time machines. The time-collapsing effect of seeing a Roman roof tile with cats’ pawprints tracked across it, or a Minoan vase covered with expressive swooshes of brushstrokes, is the best way of time-travelling I know. Things that were fresh out of the kiln hundreds of years ago are exactly the same as they are now, which is like a kind of magic trick.
The other thing about clay that I love is its egalitarianism – this ubiquitous, cheap material that’s literally dug up out of the ground and used to make everything from priceless Sevres dinner services to pipes carrying our crap away. Such a versatile material is an ideal medium from which to learn about social history, almost all the way back through human history and reflecting every stratum of society. Ceramics always communicate something about the time and place they were produced.
I’m a massive fan of decorated European earthenware made between the 15th and 18th centuries; especially Dutch and English Delftware and Italian Maiolica. There is a very lively narrative element to these types of decorated ceramics, recording the society of the time they were made. Some of the shapes are a bit mystifying as to their use, as items such as posset pots, bleeding bowls and leech jars aren’t used any more, and this adds another layer of social history on top of the painted decorations.
For the last few years, I’ve been hugely enjoying myself researching the history of Delft and Maiolica, and creating my own versions of these styles to share observations about my experience of the society I live in. I like to draw parallels in my work with aspects of life now and the time the originals were made.
This collection of work for the Scottish Gallery is a continuation of my obsession with the Italian Renaissance Maiolica style. The opportunity to create a large body of work gave me the freedom to explore another long-standing preoccupation: the many forms of ever-evolving ‘folk languages’ of signs, symbols, slang, and emojis that all of us understand and use but aren’t taught or learnt in a formal way.
I’m fascinated by the slightly subversive habit we’ve always had of appropriating and repurposing words and symbols for our own devices – alternative languages hiding within a formal structure such as slang, the shorthand visual communication of hand signs and so on. It’s all very much a punk-rock way of repurposing and subverting existing language structures that makes language so alive and I find this endlessly fascinating.
Because I spend so much of my time looking at images of Maiolica in books, online and in museums, I’ve accidentally developed a kind of ‘Renaissance lens’ through which I engage with contemporary things like social media, the news etc. This is how it struck me that our habit of using emojis in text-speak very much mirrors the use of signs and symbols in the Renaissance. Part of the collection illustrates this with a mixture of emojis and Renaissance symbols. There is also a foray into the cheeky world of 18th century slang words for male and female genitals in the form of two large ‘Tree of Life’ tile panels, framed in the style of Andrea della Robbia with relief sculptures of the nudge-wink emojis for males and females.
I’ve always appreciated a little injection of humour. There’s something very democratic about a joke, especially a slightly cheeky one. It’s a very inclusive way of communicating with, rather than lecturing or talking down to, that is completely right for me and the things I want to talk about. It’s such a welcoming, conversational approach to discussing cultural history - especially Art history, which tends to be seen as one of those subjects that isn’t accessible to everyone. I hope my work brings with it the message that our cultural heritage of Art history and ‘the Classics’ belongs to all of us, not just the fortunate few like me who were educated in these subjects.
