Subtle Ground

Feeling our ways towards a supportive method in ceramic practice

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Journal for Artistic Research (JAR)

Priska Falin & Helen Felcey

(2022)

This ex­po­si­tion pres­ents ar­tis­tic re­search, part of an on­going col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween Pris­ka Falin and I. For some time, we have been de­vel­op­ing an ex­plo­ra­tion of clay as a ma­te­ri­al that grounds our bod­ies and cre­ates a con­nec­tion to the sur­round­ing en­vi­ron­ment. Work­ing on this ex­po­si­tion was an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­flect close­ly on our work to­get­her since 2018, draw­ing to­geth­er the per­son­al ex­pe­ri­enc­es and ex­plo­ra­tions which have sig­nif­i­cant­ly shaped our re­search. We focus par­tic­u­lar­ly on Sen­so­ri­al Ground, an on­line work­shop de­liv­er­ed in 2020 dur­ing the glo­bal pan­dem­ic as part of the Brit­ish Ce­ram­ic Bi­en­ni­al’s Na­tion­al Sum­mer School pro­gramme.

The ex­po­si­tion was pub­lish­ed in the Jour­nal for Ar­tis­tic Re­search (JAR), in Oc­to­ber 2022.

Abstract:

This ex­po­si­tion fo­cuses on the ex­plo­ra­tion and de­vel­op­ment of Sub­tle Ground, a meth­od that di­rects at­ten­tion dur­ing and through mak­ing with clay, in the con­text of cre­a­tive prac­tices in ce­ram­ics. The meth­od takes a non-con­ven­tion­al ap­proach to mak­ing; it fo­cus­es on ‘being with’ the ma­te­ri­al in­stead of pur­su­ing a con­clu­sion in the cre­a­tive pro­cess. The meth­od di­rects the prac­ti­tion­er to fol­low aes­thet­ic qual­i­ties in mak­ing un­der­stood from a prag­ma­tist view of hav­ing an ex­pe­ri­ence. This ex­po­si­tion fo­cuses on the au­thor’s col­lab­o­ra­tive work that has shaped the Sub­tle Ground meth­od, par­tic­u­lar­ly the work­shop Sen­so­ri­al Ground. In Sub­tle Ground, the idea of dwell­ing is em­pha­sised of­fer­ing a spe­cif­ic ap­proach to mak­ing. The meth­od con­sists of a se­ries of ex­er­cises that di­rect at­ten­tion to­wards sub­tle sense per­cep­tion with­in the body. Through work­ing with the Sub­tle Ground meth­od, we sug­gest that it is pos­si­ble to begin to un­der­stand the em­bod­ied di­men­sion and how it in­flu­ences cre­a­tive prac­tice. The Sub­tle Ground meth­od has been built on the clay’s sup­port­ive qual­i­ties, bring­ing to­geth­er sense per­cep­tion and phys­i­cal­i­ty, thus un­der­stand­ing the prac­tice’s aes­thet­ic qual­i­ties and con­nec­tions to med­i­ta­tion.