On The Way to Language (2018) Camberwell Space, London
Project contributors (exhibition and workshops): Committee, Dunhill and O’Brien, Takahiro Kondo, Kimberley Chandler, Stephen Knott, David Cross, David Gates, Shane Waltener, Haptic Tacit, Michael Giambrone, Michael Hurley
Contributors:
Dunhill and O’Brien
Committee (Clare Page and Harry Richardson)
Takahiro Kondo
Kimberley Chandler and Stephen Knott (writers in residence)
The exhibition was consisted of:
– Stone Appreciation: Booth* by Dunhill and O’Brien
– The Last Man’s Seat (Digital Film) by Committee
– ‘消滅’ (空和) (Sho-metsu Utsuwa) by Takahiro Kondo, accompanied by the slide projection Conversations with Takahiro Kondo by Maiko Tsutsumi
– Source Texts (slide projection) a collection of quotes edited together by Maiko Tsutsumi from academic texts that relate to one or more of the subjects: thought processes / language / gesture / human and material agencies
– Writer’s Shed** for the resident writers
– Join communal table (designed and made by Michael Giambrone) for the workshops and the exhibition visitors
– Benches for contemplation
– Cork pin-(sc)roll on the wall displaying gathered texts
– Extracts from Source Texts projection on the gallery windows (calligraphy by Michael Hurley)
*Clay “Rocks” made by the participants using the Stone Appreciation: Booth were also added to the exhibition as they were made.
**The resident writers posed a question each week, which was drawn on the blackboard wall in their ‘writers’ shed’ where visitors were invited to leave their responses.
Workshop/talk contributors:
David Cross Words Fail Me
Shane Waltener Collaborative making workshop: script / score / recipe / instruction
David Gates Making Stories: Situating Talk as an Aspect of Material Practice
Dunhill and O’Brien Stone Appreciation participatory performance
Haptic/Tacit (Grant Aston, Jane Cairns, Kim Norton) Physical Traces of Making, Language and Interpretation, Action of Doing
Balin House Projects ‘Sunday Lunch’ (Eduardo Padilha and Harold Offeh) and guests (Elena Cologni and Rachel Cheung)
The exhibition was accompanied by a publication On the Way to Language
Text from Camberwell Space press release
”On the Way to Language is an exhibition and series of public events at Camberwell Space, curated by Maiko Tsutsumi, course leader of MA Designer Maker at Camberwell College of Arts.
For this project, the gallery will be transformed into a salon space, where workshops, discussions, and events can take place: a shifting, ever-evolving work in progress. The focus of the project is on the exchange of ideas, conversation and new approaches to the language used around and within making practices.
Two writers-in-residence, Kimberley Chandler and Stephen Knott, will collect words from the show. For the duration of the exhibition they will collect fragments of text as an extension of their on-going work which proposes different ways to talk about craft.
The exhibition includes three key works that trigger different ways of thinking about language, logic and making. A large-scale ceramic pot by Takahiro Kondo, inclusive of the accidents that occur when firing (in the anagama wood firing kiln such large works, creates a conversation between maker and material. Stone Appreciation by Mark Dunhill and Tamiko O’Brien offers a device for translating form using tactile language. Last Man’s Seat, a stop motion animation by Committee contains hundreds of decisions, made so precisely that they become their own language, in materiality as well as representation. Other contributors to On the Way to Language include Haptic Tacit, an artist/maker collective, David Cross, Shane Waltener, and Eduardo Padilha of BalinHouseProjects. The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of public events.”
Source Texts bibliography
