Of Heart and Hand - 2017 James Bloomfield with Darwen Terracotta for the Festival of Making

James Bloomfield and Darwen Terracotta –  "Of heart and hand" - Blackburn Cathedral

A pink slip cast craftsperson’s toolbox alongside eight, monumental sculptural columns provides a poignant and powerful symbol of the camaraderie, trust and friendship of workers at Darwen Terracotta, a company resurrected by employees facing redundancy. Artist, James Bloomfield ‘walked the floor’ to research the breadth of techniques used across the now successful, specialist architectural terracotta and faience business and noted the individualism evident at personal ‘maker stations’ and workbenches, whether the tools being used for that specialism or personal artefacts. In a celebration of the craftsperson’s hand, these functional items have been individually cast to elevate them to objects of designated cultural value, whether a pencil, a spray gun or a sculpting knife. The sculptural cast of a glazed bright pink toolbox alone presents an evocative, permanent document of the friendship of two, inseparable female workers, with the cast objects exhibited at Blackburn Cathedral’s Temple Gallery.

 Outside the Cathedral in a new public square, eight columns will reference many of the company’s most successful projects, reaching up to 2 metres tall and bringing 32 people into the casting process. The powerful structures, created using technology introduced at the company in 2010, but pioneered by Italian Ceramic Artist, Nino Caruso in the 1970’s, inspire contemplation on Darwen Terracotta’s history, a story of people rising together. For the artist, it is a story that reflects Blackburn’s history of workforce rebellion and protest, evoking the story of 1817 ‘Blanketeers March’ and their demands of rights for weavers against mechanisation.

www.darwenterracotta.com / www.jamesbloomfield.co.uk

Photogrpahs courtesy of Richard Tymon http://richardtymon.com/http://richardtymon.com/

Darwen Terracotta residency short film by Wash Design Studio

JAMES BLOOMFIELD AND DARWEN TERRACOTTA from Wash Design Studio on Vimeo.

Here is a short film made by Andy Walmsley of Wash design Studio for my recent residency at Darwen Terracotta for The National Festival of Making in collaboration with Decopublique, Hemingwaydesign and Super Slow Way. Its a minute long but gives a real insight into the project.

The National Festival of Making - Residency with Darwen Terracotta

I am  pleased to announce my participation in the ground breaking ‘Art In Manufacturing’ project. As part of the first ever National Festival of Making, supported by arts commissioners Super Slow Way and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, exciting new art will roll off the production lines of factories in Pennine Lancashire as nine, specially commissioned artists negotiate heavy machinery, industrial production techniques and up to 160 years of making heritage. I will be working with the fabulous Darwen Terracotta to create a piece of artwork in collaboration with their highly skilled workforce.  More info to follow.

Exchanging their studios for the hot houses of modern manufacturing, the artists will enjoy an unprecedented level of access to staff, machinery, company archives and materials at the nine partnering manufacturers, all located around Pennine Lancashire in North West England. Art In Manufacturing not only seeks to develop the ideas of artists in unfamiliar environments and create engaging and accessible new work, but also encourage investigation into Britain’s manufacturing heritage, specifically that of Lancashire, with direct engagement from staff members in each participating company.

The resulting artworks and performances will be revealed as part of the National Festival of Making, appearing in the town centre of Blackburn, Lancashire.

Developed by a new Festival of Making Community Interest Company - a collaborative venture involving designer, Wayne Hemingway MBE, festival producers, Deco Publique and creative place-making social enterprise, Placeshakers the festival is a FREE family festival happening just an hour away from Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool. The festival programme, encompassing cultural events, markets and workshops, promises to be a vibrant celebration of British making, where people of all ages will see, hear, taste and take part in things they’ll encounter nowhere else.

Art In Manufacturing at The National Festival of Making

Sat 6 – Sun 7 May 2017

FREE

Blackburn, Lancashire (Various Town Centre Locations)

For updates about the festival programme and information on how to get involved visit www.festivalofmaking.co.uk and sign up to the mailing list. News and opportunities will also be posted on Twitter at www.twitter.com/festofmaking and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/festofmaking.

Fighting Resistance Meeting with SMAG and WCML

Last week saw my research period come to a close and the presentation of my ideas to the team at Salford Museum and Art Gallery and the Working Class movement library. It was a great meeting with everyone interested in the process I had undertaken over the last 6 months. From researching Pilkingtons Tiles and learning about the infamous William Burton to visiting the amazing collection at SMAG and WCML.

I talked about my fascination with the idea for a Refuge and the possibilities of recreating one in the gallery setting and of my visit to Lindesfarne and Holy Island to document the refuges there. I really like the idea of offering refuge or sanctuary in these times we we live in.  Other ideas included the transmitting through radio waves the names of the 16,000 conscientious objectors and the creation of a set of Commemorative plates marking each global conflict since the end of the First World War of which there have been 226.

The idea that excites me most and ties in with my practice in the strongest way is the commemorative plates, it links in with the Pilkingtons Collection and Archive situated at the Gallery, it ties in with my current obsession of conflict and ceramics and then there will be a perfomative aspect of the presentation of the plates by having them used in the cafe at SMAG and Ordsall Hall as part of the regular service.

I am know in the process of creating 226 commemorative plates! watch this space

Bankley Open Call Manchester October 2016

Here a few choice photographs from the Bankley Open Call 2016 the photographs were taken by Linda Hemmersbach . It was a great exhibition and there was some really strong work on display. The piece next to my Agent Orange work is by Laura Moreton Griffiths more details on her practise here: http://www.lauramoretongriffiths.com/.

The work I submitted was influenced by Reading George Ritzers "The McDonaldisation of Society" and comments on de-forestation and our consumerist society. The Mc Donald's cups are cast in Porcelain and then pit-fired using ancient techniques and reclaimed CHEP lumber pallets.

Visiting the Collection at Salford Museum and Art Gallery with Peter Ogilvie- 6th October

Today I had a meeting at Salford Museum and art Gallery to see Peter Ogilvie the Collections Manager and the gatekeeper to the vaults. I’ll be honest with you I didn’t quite now what to expect when I arrived and was a little anxious about the visit. 

 It took the receptionist around 10 minutes to locate Peter and I thought at first that he had forgotten about the meeting it was only later on that I realised why it had taken so long to track him down. After a warm handshake I was taken down some stairs and the steel safe door was opened with a large bunch of keys . Peter tells me that the museum opened in 1850 and was the first unconditionally free public library,  and didn’t have a collection as such and the collection has just grown over time.

 The first Room as you may expect was racked out with floor to ceiling paintings, from 20^th Century British Moderns to Victorian Portraits in Gilt frames, to a collection of  local Miners paintings given therapeutic art once the pits had closed. Many of the paintings appear in the "Your Paintings “ website (now Artuk)which lists all the paintings in the UK in public collections. Peter tells me that it took them the best part of a year to photograph all of Salfords paintings.

 The next room contained at least as many water colours and works on paper, many from Northern Artists and whole rack of local history paintings containing local scenes and areas of local importance. I didn’t realise but Salford Museum has a remit to take in such works , or objects that have local importance or significance and I suppose this is why it was important for them to secure the Pilkingtons tile Archive.

After this second room I was impressed by the sheer number of paintings, it was only on entering the next section of the collection that I began to feel overwhelmed. A room full of social history objects, industrial objects and machinery, a pair of what looked like ancient“inuit” ski’s, a dolly tub, even a soda stream. This section was populated with objects that have been donated to the museum by the public, objects that are significant to a time in history, this theme carried on to the next huge room floor to ceiling racking contain intriguing archive boxes of costumes, dress uniforms, tri-corn hats, doctors bags, childrens toys.

  This room then spilled out to house another museums collection that closed down in Salford some time ago, lots of childrens toys and games, from the Victorian era right up to the eighties. This room then led on to a furniture room, and then an occupation room where objects are field by the profession, doctor, chemist, carpenter etc. By this point I was completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things, and the final room was cupboards wall to wall with ceramics, glass and pewter ware.

The collection has over 120,000 items at the last count and this is spread throughout the basement of the whole of the Museum and Art gallery. It was on leaving the collection that realised why it had taken 10 minutes to track Peter down in the labyrinth of History underneath the museum. 

What struck me was the sheer weight of objects and the need to store them as part of our shared history, many of these items will never see the light of day again, catalogued and boxed until somebody takes an interest and asks for a viewing. I wondered if this is just another aspect to our society for hoarding, consumerism and placing value on material objects, but then each object has a story and its truths are just waiting to be unlocked or re-told. I will be visiting again soon to pull out some WW1 era objects that might spark some ideas or take my project down a different path.

 

Thomas Paine - a welcome distraction at the Working Class Movement Library - 29th September

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After a full sunny morning of trawling through archive records at Salford Local History Library  I thought I would treat myself to a visit to the Working Class Movement Library. The weather was turning and the wind was starting to blow a gale as I sat in the grounds of the University.  I crossed Chapel street and rang the bell and received a warm welcome at the library. What I wanted to see was the pamphlet “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine. I had read a little about the corset maker revolutionary and wanted to read for myself the words that sparked such controversy.

 The library assistant showed me into the reading room and then produced the archive box containing the book and some other reading material around the pamphlet. The book that contained the piece was hand bound and incredibly old, I presume it was published on or around the 1870’s , each page was punched through with the original letter press giving each page a textured feel not seen in today's printing. You could feel the mark of the maker and it was akin to reading a handwritten letter. The only problem was that the typeset was unusual in that the capital S looked like a lowercase f. Now this gave the whole reading a twist as many words I had to read twice as I was reading them with a lisp! For example “support” read as “fupport” and “sentiment” as “fentiment” after the first few hundred words or so I got used to it and enjoyed the first half very much.
 
 Thomas Paine is very clever in setting up his audience with an argument that you can all agree on , he then like all great philosophers uses this same premise to de-bunk other taken truths and succeeds in changing your viewpoint as you read. I can see how such a pamphlet stirred minds and created action. In hindsight though I think it would have been great if he had cast his rhetoric to the viewpoint of the Native Americans who at the time were experiencing a ruthless and programmed horrific genocide.

The more I read the more I begin to feel demoralised about the state of the word and the fact that history does repeat itself. The other great book Ive been reading at the moment is “The Silk Roads” by Peter Frankopan a history of the world from the viewpoint of the East. From this it is apparent that the collection of taxes and share capital has always been the great motivator of war and greed of Mankind and that history has been a repeat of conquer and be conquered throughout all of history, from great nations and civilisations, to hordes of Vandals and Mongols, Fascists and Empiricist's, all at the expense of the common man and woman. Many of the earliest writings are mere ledger books about trade and who owes who.

Out of all this came a glimmer of hope as Lynette passed me a leaflet for an up a upcoming convention.

Conscience and Conscription: Resistance to war, Friday 14th and Saturday 15th October 2016. There are a series of talks organised by the abolish war campaign , Cyril Pearce is talking and a whole host of other talks. I followed the trail to the abolish war campaign and found a link to a brilliant talk by a lecturer from Bradford called Professor Paul Rogers : "Future Wars and How to Prevent Them". This talk is in two versions the long one is the most comprehensive and I found it to be totally uplifting and hopeful that people are studying this and looking into how we can effect change. More on this in future musings.

more info on abolish war here : http://www.abolishwar.org.uk/ 

The you tube Paul Rodgers talk is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDg4F769ciw&t=715s

Abraham Lomax, 16,000 experiments - Salford Local History Library 29th September 2016

This morning I took some time to visit Salford Local History Library and have a quick peek at the archival records for the Pilkington Tiles Archive which Duncan McCormick the librarian had kindly dug out for me.

The folder contained some 122 pages each one documenting an object, letter, artwork that forms part of the History of the company. The file was put together by Barry and Angela of the Lancastrian Pottery Society. What struck me most amongst the many correspondence and documents was how similar daily life seemed to be to ours. There were rent and rates demands, insurance documents, share capital and tax returns. Letters from prospective employees, legal demands for slander, magazine cuttings, artwork ideas, and a thousand patent requests. Just reading through the list of documents and objects gave me a real feel for the company and what it achieved. The company was a bit of an anomaly really, creating its own identity outside of Stafford and Stoke the pottery capital of the world. I think this gave it a real unique identity, it was also different for the workers who were used to the satanic mills and coal mines. The pottery was a place of imagination, colour, art and spectacle.

 I highlighted some things that I think will be of interest to the project one of them being the notebooks of Abraham Lomax who was the ceramic chemist left to experiment with glazes and clay bodies. He did some 16,000 experiments over his initial first years with much of his work providing the factory with important discoveries and glaze recipes for years to come.  The other is a book by Franklin Shaw entitled “my Fifty years” which I believe will touch on the the War years.

The Archive and the way it is documented is interesting in itself as life becomes History to be stored and sorted through at a later date. The pressing arguments of the day become a memory or artifact with little relevance apart from the lives it has touched at the and for someone looking for clues for the future.