POTTERS PLACE
Local terracotta clay, porcelain powder, soil, sand, discarded local ceramic objects
150*15*200cm
Kondagaon, India | 2012
Kondagoan is a small village where most of the locals are involved in terracotta production, and the name translates into english as 'potters place'. The surrounding fields are dug to use the clay soil to make bricks, which are then dried and arranged in huge structures, filed with rice husk as fuel, and slowly fired. Houses and walls are often made from cheap unfired bricks and the front yards of homes have terracotta cooking pots and handicrafts drying in the sun outside. These figures and animals are traded with tribal people who take them into the woods for religious ceremonies, where the spirit is believed to enter the objects for the duration of the ritual. After completion of the ceremony and having now served it's purpose, the now inanimate objects are left in place where they slowly sink into the forest floor through the seasons of monsoons and falling leaves, becoming one with the earth as they were before. The bricks for this piece were made by layering in readymade broken and rejected handicraft objects from the villagers production, together with various Indian local spices. I was interested to bring together the bricks and handicraft objects to create a 360 degree wall that considered this process of the ceramic objects returning to the clay forest floor.