Im/material Knowledge

Focus area: Ceramics & clay

Module responsible: Corrina Thornton

HMS: Ceramics & clay workshop

This module considers different perspectives on care, investigating topics such as social practice, care ethics, collective care, self-care, maternal care, and care of objects and the environment, with your individual practice as the starting and ending point.

Based within the ceramics focus area, the module explores clay as a vessel for embodying, enacting, and enabling reflections and actions on and about caring. Other mediums and techniques are also welcome, such as video, performance, sculpture, printmaking, and more. Different ways of expressing and sharing the module’s themes are encouraged; you may choose to work with (as examples and not excluding other connected contexts) archives, relational practice, the climate crisis, maternal and reproductive rights, memory, and human relationships.

HMS in ceramics and clay is included for all students, regardless of level. The module begins with a compulsory two-day introduction where students with prior knowledge of clay are paired as mentors with students new to the medium. Maintaining a focus on collective care and group connection throughout the module, teaching and learning methods take shape around knowledge-sharing and discussion, activities and tasks, technical demonstrations, individual and collective research, and project development. The module concludes with a collaboratively developed publication or exhibition.

This is a project-based module with a focus on the permeability of matter, investigating both material and immaterial approaches to artistic expression. Forms of communication – visual, tactile, oral, written, performative – are explored with special attention paid to both tacit and cognitive forms of knowledge.

PRO modules are designed to enrich your artist development (as explored in the ART modules) through activating skills, connecting communities of practice, and investigating disciplinary territories. PRO modules allow you to focus on a specific project critically connected to your own practice within a context established by the module leader(s).

Knowledge:

• Develop awareness of relevant references and practices

Skills

• Explore strategies linking concepts of immateriality and transformation to artistic practice
• Identify, seek out, and apply relevant skills to a self-initiated project

General Competence

• Identify your own learning needs in relation to the subject area(s)
• Apply new knowledge and skills within your artistic practice
• Resolve, realize, and present new work