Florence with a harvest jug from the RJ Lloyd Collection of North Devon slipware
Florence Dwyer is an artist based in Glasgow. Predominantly working with ceramics, her practice involves embodied research into object making in different capacities; from industrial manufacturing to vernacular design and domestic craft.
Her recent ceramics residency at The Victoria and Albert Museum (2022-23) sparked her interest in working with museum collections. Florence is the current holder of The Burton’s Ceramics Residency, and her residency exhibition Platter is now open.
Here Florence tells us more about the residency, her response to the RJ Lloyd Collection and how she made the works in the exhibition.
Hello Florence. Congratulations on the opening of your residency exhibition, Platter. How was the experience?
The residency was a space of gathering and exploring and then translating this through experimenting in my studio. It was amazing to be able to get up close and almost investigate the making processes of such an exciting collection of pottery.
It was also a great opportunity to visit the studios of renowned slipware potters Clive Bowen and Harry Juniper who have such a different approach to working with similar materials.
What inspired you about the Collection?
I loved seeing how decoration was used to fill the space of a pot in such an energetic way and how it doesn’t look as though the outcome or overall composition was predetermined. I like the thought that motifs, patterns and ideas came to the potter as they were making and that they placed them wherever came to hand in that moment. The process wasn’t precious.
Platter by Florence Dwyer. Image by Kevin Percival
I was inspired by how the potters depicted subjects they knew about or were accessible to them and how quickly things were made with just a few materials. Often motifs were left half drawn or unfinished.
It made me question the value we place on objects; who can recognise value? What do we choose to place value on? How do we attribute value to certain items? These questions arose after seeing how RJ Lloyd collected half-baked bricks, drain covers and broken pots as well as some of the most elaborate sgraffito harvest jugs. He saw the importance and beauty in everyday objects made by hand.
I was inspired by how the act of scratching into clay can be used to commemorate events, births, deaths, marriages and people. I liked how some pieces in the collection just bear a person’s name or a date, leaving you to question who that person was. What happened on that day? Whilst others, like the small jug with a boat tangled up in ropes scratched into the slip, record a moment from the potters’ memory of a shipwreck.
Many of the potters were also people who worked the land. Therefore the pots would be made in the slack periods of the agricultural year. I like how this is often reflected in the decoration on the wares, for example through the use of leaves. But also how this has made me reflect on my own approach to making and the reality of being an artist or someone who makes in current society – how we have to juggle multiple roles, jobs and commitments and how this often seeps into the outcomes of our work.
Tell us about the making of the works and your approach
I wanted to make work that is domestic in scale and form and platters seemed like the perfect choice. A lot of the North Devon slipware was made for celebrations to mark the end of the harvest, they are functional pieces that brought people together. Whether it was a jug, plate, dish or mug, I imagine they would have been shared, passed round big groups of people, piled up with food and been overflowing with liquid. I wanted to make forms that would offer that similar feeling, for which I feel platters offer spaces for gathering, sharing and collecting.
Platter by Florence Dwyer. Image by Kevin Percival
It felt instinctual to work with similar materials to what the North Devon potters would have used: red clay, slip and honey/green glaze.
Half way through the residency I ran workshops with the staff at The Burton. In these I wanted to explore ideas surrounding commemoration as a tool for engaging with the collection. We identified people of significance to us and responded to a series of questions and prompts about them to inspire us to draw with scissors and create some paper cuts. I collected all the offcuts from these, brought them back to my studio and incorporated them into some of the platters.
I set myself some parameters to making: to work quickly and to use what I had to hand. This led me to working with found and collected bits of paper, newspaper cuttings, string, leaves, receipts, party poppers, streamers and confetti which I enjoyed throwing and placing onto the damp platters surface which I’d then pour and layer slips over the top. Like the potters, I didn’t want to overthink composition. I wanted the decoration to be almost falling off the plate. I wanted to capture movement and moments.
I also worked with a fishing weight found by the canal just next to my studio. I’d drop this into clay, write with it and draw diagrams. This led to me creating some of the relief platters which record moments that my mum recorded for me in a diary from when I was 16 years old. Like some of the moments captured on the North Devon slipware, these were both mundane and significant.
Platter by Florence Dwyer runs until 13 April in the Ceramics Gallery. Free entry.
Find out more about Florence’s work at florencedwyer.com
