Future Ecologies of Clay

The challenge addressed by this project is the collecting of expanded clay practices and the ability of UK museums to make them accessible to future audiences; there is currently a significant gap between what is being made and exhibited by contemporary artists working with clay and what is represented in museum collections.
Examples of innovative expanded clay practice can be transient or mutable; some involve performance, large-scale installation, or audience activity for their completion. Yet, museums have traditionally prioritized the acquisition of ceramic objects over the complexities of capturing live process-based clay works. Frequently remnants of such works are chosen to represent them but are acknowledged to be of secondary importance. Therefore, although museums regularly nurture expanded clay practices within temporary exhibition and education spaces, they are unable to collect them adequately and ensure the knowledge they hold will be available to future generations. Specific problems posed by the collection of such clay practices have not been directly addressed by recent research into the collection of other challenging fields, where primary concerns have been contemporary performance and digital artworks. The specialist focus proposed here will also bring significant new knowledge to the collection of wider material and hybrid art practices, and fresh perspectives to the collection of new media.
The principal aim of this research by the V&A and the CRC-UK is to ensure recent and historical examples of ephemeral, live, performative, site-responsive and participatory works in clay can be identified, explored and analysed in the future. It will open up a new area of discourse in the field of museology concerning the collection and archiving of clay practices that do not result in permanent and tangible objects.
Research objectives are to explore:

The extent to which established collecting strategies and taxonomies of museums have succeeded or failed...