Precarity: Re-configuring Practice Through Material.

Introduction

In the chapters: “The Art of Assimilation” and “Constructing Agency” I discussed the issues

I confront as an artist who is positioned within the post-colonial discourses that frame

indigenous cultural production within the Western art structures. I identified strategies to

deal with these issues and discussed the response to and work of artists who also grappled

with the complexities of engagement with the Western contemporary art paradigm. The key

issues that have emerged from this inquiry which inform my current practice are the:

collapsing of hierarchical classifications implicit in Western art structures, the challenging of

art-historical categorisations which maintain identarian strategies of representation and the

need for the construction of both historical and individual agency from a position of

relevance within my studio-led practice.

In “Precarity: Reconfiguring Practice Through Material”, I critically analyse my

response to these issues and contextualise my artwork in relation to the critical, cultural and

aesthetic approaches I have been examining to date and which inform my current practice as

an indigenous artist. I use the term indigenous deliberately. For me this label signifies not

my ethnicity or any use of signs and symbols that might reflect specific cultural memories. I

use the term indigenous artist to locate my practice as a maker and artist within a cultural

parameter that has a specific relationship with both modern and contemporary art. Formed

within the so called post-colonial interface which exists within New Zealand, my art practice

is one which by necessity disrupts privileged knowledge or challenges accepted practices

from a critical outlook. It is also one that has inherent cultural sensibilities that are expressed

through material interactions and modes of thinking that are unique to my experiences as a

person who has both an indigenous and a multicultural heritage.

I critically analyse the development of my work during the past two years within the

contexts of; ideas informing practice (ideas that are given form in the process of making

artworks) and the alternative; a material-led practice, one in which “materials and processes

of production have their own intelligence that come into play in interaction with the artist’s

creative intelligence” (Sullivan, 2006, p.1). Within this inquiry I examine the key theories

and events that helped shift my practice from one that is contained within the expressing of

an idea to one that employs thinking through material and process where the resulting objects

are open to the multiple dialogs.

This analysis is performed in two parts. The first deals with early works which

orientate around the anthropomorphism that is inherent to the ceramic vessel. Here I employ

the vessel as a vehicle to reference the notion of “containment” as a site of conflict whilst

investigating new ways of working with ceramic materials and forms that challenge

conventional practices of the field. The second part deals with works that have as their focus

material experimentation and process intervention where construction at a material level,

becomes the site of conflict and explores the limitations of material and the boundaries of

what is perceived as ceramic practice in the contemporary as well as within the conception of

Contemporary Maori Art. The thread connecting these two genres of works is a continuing

interrogation of material and form and a willingness to engage with risk and discovery as a

means of inspiration.

Constructing a Position: Material Matters I draw a parallel between the situating of ceramic practice within Western art discourses as

“craft” and the circumscribed idioms assigned to indigenous contemporary art production. I

frame these as interventions which have systematically devalued and subordinated these

practices to Western art discourses privileged terms of reference (Fisher, 2003, Adamson,

2007). These sites of conflict are systemic of the hierarchical thinking built into Western

dualistic dialogues. These manifest in various ways in social and cultural constructs and

provide the ground on which I establish my art praxis.

The relevance of the socio-political issues I have been examining to my current

practice emerges from the use of a material that sits outside of the cultural parameters of my

previous practice. I frame this practice as a “Contemporary Traditionalist”, to borrow

Luiseño artist James Luna’s term used to describe indigenous artists who produce work based

on customary tribal practices within the contemporary art world (Fisher, 1992, p.44).

Working with clay, a material with its own pluralistic histories; one that is not used within the

customary practices of Maori cultural production posed a number of questions for me in

relation to my artistic identity which previously had been framed within the traditions of

Raranga, Maori weaving. For instance, if I was not using customary Maori material (clay)

could I still be considered a Maori artist? Or, if I used non-customary materials and added

cultural signifiers would these be considered Maori art and in doing so am I continuing the

fictions of prescribed cultural authenticity.

In addition to challenging the conception and definition of contemporary Maori art as

a problematized identity, was the matter of my developing a relationship with a new material

which had its own inherent tendencies and histories and constructing an artistic point of view

through material interaction. Interestingly the construction of identity within the ceramic

field from an essentialist position (categorical designation), grapples with a similar question

of identity within the contemporary art field: What is ceramics? (Welch, 2009, p.51).

Determining answers to these questions within both fields necessarily requires definition of

what it is not and raises the issue of authenticity maintained through the authority of

culturally constructed identities.

That both indigenous art forms and ceramics are material based disciplines which

historically have an uncomfortable relationship with Modernism and contemporary art further

constructs a precarious position for my practice, one that by necessity demands a deeper

questioning of the social and cultural constructs I grapple with. Precarity in this context is

within Nicolas Bourriaud’s conception of the term and is an apt descriptor of the social and

cultural constructs I am investigating and the nature of my emerging studio practice.

Characterised by a dangerous lack of security or stability precarity implies “that its future is

hinged on chance circumstances and unknown conditions.” (Ritter, 2010) thus uniquely tied

to uncertainty and risk. This serves to address the notion of precarity as both a condition of

the inquiry into my position within my own cultural parameters of contemporary Maori art,

and the construction of a position for a studio based practice of exploration and

experimentation with materials, form and structure within Western art paradigm that

circumscribes the place of both disciplines. This space is the territory between collective and

individual cultural identities and hierarchical discourses. I frame this as a site of conflict for

me where the push and pull between cultural convention and social constructs has translated

into a working methodology that seeks to alter, manipulate and test the limitations of material

and reconfigure processes. The basis of this critical inquiry however, in my opinion, must

draw on the knowledge of the cultural, social and historical influences of the material I

engage with, tightly integrated with my artistic intention and reflections.

My introduction to clay was through the form of the vessel. Fabricating a damp lump

of clay into a three dimensional form was and continues to be an act of delight. At a material

level the shift between the cultures of raranga to that of ceramics was relatively easy given

that both practices included forms that served the purpose of saving, storing, and protecting:

containment, my area of interest. Further to this both disciplines are material based and

demanded a sensitivity to the materials of those practices. For example: central to learning

the techniques of raranga and kete (woven baskets) is the relationship between the weaver

and the various fibres used in this work. It is often said that within the weaving fraternity that

a kete is only as good as how the weaver “treats” the fibre. This relationship with material is

accentuated in the ceramicist’s situation: in dealing with the plasticity of clay, remarkable for

its ability to record mark, the knowledge of and technical ability with the materials inherent

tendencies becomes an imperative to control the desired visual outcomes of the objects.

I consider this approach to material as a sensibility that in my situation is culturally

enrooted. Material concern is one such sensibility that is in my experience deeply embedded

within Maori material culture, and is an imperative within my own making processes. The

notion that all material has a history, purpose and specific tendencies is central to the teaching

of any customary Maori material practice. As such it is a cultural sensibility that emerges

through the work as evidence of the relationship and the level of intimacy a maker has with

their material of choice. The term cultural sensibility has become a means of depoliticising

culture and cultural difference and I use historian Daniel Wickberg’s definition of the term:

sensibilities pull us back to the substance of culture . . . It is not about how people

used culture for social and political ends, but about the terms in which they

experienced the world. Sensibilities define the terms in which people experience and

make sense of the world, and in which they represent it to themselves and others.

(2007, p.676)

Deconstruction of the ways post- colonial discourses have positioned indigenous cultural

production has been a central issue that I have had to reconcile within the development of my

ceramic practice. Identifying this material sensibility has enabled a shift in focus on

ideological constructs I grapple with to a focus of material engagement as a means of

questioning these constructs. The following discussion of my work analyses key works

within the past two years that reflect this shift.

Constructed Realities: The Friction of Difference

In 2011the central ideas I was grappling with were the containment of ideas, the way

indigenous individuals construct reality, but also the conflicts that naturally arise between

individual and collective artistic aspirations of an indigenous group: the positioning of my

practice within a single and unchanging category for example. In response to this dynamic

my work at this time investigated the notion of ideological ‘containment’ using the ceramic

vessel as a means of expression and as a political “body” loaded with complex meanings

associated to craft (Racz, 2011, p.223).

Jess Paraone, 2011. Untitled, [Slip cast stoneware clay, ceramic resist, water etched 33 x 18 x

18 cm.]. Collection of the artist.

The Untitled series of vessels was developed, inspired by the Qumran scroll jars

containing the Dead Sea Scrolls (Paraone, 2011). Examining issues of containment,

protection, and the continuation of knowledge of people and culture, I employed the Qumran

jar’s cylindrical profile, with straight slightly bowed sides, a footed base, pronounced

shoulders, and vertical throat. Containment in the Untitled series is expressive rather that a

function of the vessel and through manipulation of the material processes employing water

and fire as form giving tools in my making processes, I investigate the notion that some ideas

“don’t hold water”.

The construction process of the Untitled vessels employs industrial techniques

including slip casting and porcelain clay, each of which has their own cultural and historical

discourses in the traditions of ceramic practice and articulate specific meanings in the object.

For example, slip casting has an industrial context associated with the mass production of

multiples. Considered an unacceptable means of production within the studio potters ethos,

(Moore, 2009, p. 42) the casting process has the potential to remove the hand of the artist

producing a desired uniformity and anonymity in the resulting objects. Porcelain on the other

hand, now used in the traditions of slip casting and easily affordable as the ready-made object

has a complex series of cultural associations stemming from its origin and relationship with

eighteenth century Europe.

A much sought after and prized material of the so called “Orient”, a distant and exotic

land, the European fascination with porcelain “evoked multiple desires, and moreover

insecurities, about European cultural predominance as well as its collective identity”

(Cavanaugh and Yonan, 2010, p. 3). This historical and critical link between the porcelain

and an ethnic other is suggestive of the fetishized object whose value is similarly historically

constituted and culturally maintained through Eurocentric discourses. Within my work, these

political histories of cultural and artistic hierarchies act as a metaphor of the structures of

power and the assumptions of value inherent within Western art hierarchies, which I have

shown, have been assimilated into indigenous ideological structures.

Through a deliberate mis-use of these materials and processes I subvert the assumed

successes of the ideological structures I confront introducing the notion of failure. Failure to

be “correct” within conventions of a practice, failure of dogmatic regimes of thought which

produce dissatisfaction with the status quo and failure as a working principle in construction

processes. For example, in the Untitled series mould marks are left intact and reasserts an

individuation within the homogenised multiple form. This is further emphasised through

subjection of the raw clay vessel to the extremes of water abrasion, a process of etching the

raw clay forms using an additive and reductive method, which has a twofold effect: surface

inscription and an experiential interrogation of the clays body’s limits of mis-use. Further

intervention of processes and high firing temperatures rigorously interrogates the strength of

both the clay body and form. The resulting alteration occurs to not only the surface as a

means of mark making, but a process that further reveals the clay body, construction methods

and deterioration of the form.

Jess Paraone. 2011. Untitled, [detail view]. Collection of the artist. My deliberate mis-use of the material and conventional processes constructs an environment

of risk and the possibility of failure: the total collapse of the form during firing for example.

This is a distinct departure from the conventional practices in ceramic traditions where

careful control of all aspects of the making processes ensures successful outcomes. An

intuitive and sensitive use of the material is the primary determiner of resulting works but

also allows openness to unforeseen but fortuitous occurrences revealed throughout these

processes, like the opening of a closed form, which becomes an integral aesthetic component

of the final work.

The Untitled series emerged as a response to the hierarchies of Western art discourse

and cultural hegemonies, which have positioned my practice within what I perceive as the

structured strictures of indigenous practice. I employ the vessel as a vehicle to reference the

notion of containment and the tension and frictions that emerge within these sites of conflict

whilst investigating new ways of working with ceramic materials that challenge traditional

assumptions of the field. The combination of these processes and material I use operate as a

metaphor for my perception of individual contained realities as fragile elements within a

constructed social reality that “don’t hold water”. I extend these processes as an analogy that

echoes intercultural engagement in a global community where competing political, cultural

and social hierarchies create for the individual, an environment often fraught with the

tensions and friction of difference.

Jess Paraone, 2011. Untitled, [Slip cast stoneware clay, ceramic resist, water etched. 33 x 18

x 18 cm.]. Collection of the artist.

Cultural Commoditisation: Reconfiguring Cultural Production

Perceived assumptions of culture and authenticity and the commoditisation of indigenous

contemporary art is one such friction that emerges within a culture of global capitalism and

cultural difference. Addressing questions of authenticity, identity, the power of symbols and

the fetishized indigenous object, the Authenti-Kitsch series (Paraone, 2011) emerged from an

examination of the politics and management of indigenous identities and the effects of this

management on contemporary cultural production. Influenced by the work of Brian Jungen’s

response to issues of global mass consumption and the fetishisation of the indigenous

artefact, Authenti- Kitsch re-politicises the homogenisation and commoditisation of Maori

cultural production.

Jess Paraone, 2011. Authenti-Kitsch Series, [Slip cast porcelain, toner, water etched 21 x 18 x

18 cm.]. Collection of the artist.

The Authenti-Kitsch series marks an initial departure from my use of the vessel in its

utilitarian form and highlights the emphasis in my work on content, where ideas are given

form in the process of making artwork. This use of the vessel is in direct contrast to the

modernist discourse, which positions the ceramic vessel as a craft object, one loaded with

complex meanings and associations to the domestic, which typically stereotypes the ceramic

“pot” with use-value whether that is the utilitarian or the symbolic and ritual vessel (Clark,

2001, p. 8). The reductive nature of this stereotyping is, in my opinion, not dissimilar to the

cultural stereotyping of culture and indigenous art practice and is indicative of the continuing

influence of Western hegemonies in positioning ceramic practice as craft.

Jess Paraone, 2011. Authenti-Kitsch, [Slip cast porcelain, toner, water etched 21 x 18 x 18

cm.]. Collection of the artist.

Continuing the use of the vessel as a political body, Authenti-Kitsch questions the

institutions that manage multiculturalism and situates them as strategies that have led to the

“assimilation of diverse populations within parameters that pretend to value race, ethnicity,

and other markers of identity but instead actually homogenize meaningful differences”

(Ashcroft, Griffiths & Tiffin, 1995, p. 57).

Extending the inherent anthropomorphism of the ceramic vessel I construct a form

that is a mimetic of a mass produced and globally recognisable form: the humble piggy bank.

A pedagogical device to teach the rudiments of thrift and savings, the origin of the piggy

bank is derived from the word pygg (pronounced pug), a type of red clay used in the

construction of eighteen century household containers and money boxes. Interestingly the

name “pig” and its diminutive “piggy” emerged from language changes over time and there is

a similarity here to the changes that occur in the symbolic value of a fetishized object, of

which the symbolic meaning is rooted in the untranslatability of signs and values between

two cultures.

Continuing my use of the slip cast multiple I repurpose the vessel body to stand-in for

a literal body with attached slip cast dolls limbs and a printed Heitiki mask. In contrast to the

processes of intervention and individuation employed in the Untitled series, I remove any

mark of my hand from the Authenti-Kitsch series producing the desired uniformity and

anonymity of industrial slip casting traditions. The porcelain is left unattended by glaze and

the surface is left dry, and it loses its refinement and appears pale and empty. In this work

the properties of the material are not explored and it is the idea or content that is

foregrounded rather than the material.

The notion of change and symbolic value becomes the content in the Authenti-Kitsch

series and I re-politicise what is often described as one of the least understood Maori

symbols: the Heitiki. An ambiguous object of Maori cultural histories, which has enjoyed a

lifetime of reproduction in various and sometimes nefarious formats since first contact with

Europeans, I employ the Heitiki as it appears on the New Zealand ten cent coin. Within this

context the work functions as a form of “New Kitsch” re-configuration, a tongue in cheek

gesture towards the establishment (Welch, 2009, p.47), whilst critiquing the histories of

Kitsch tourist art which have employed Maori symbols as fetishized curios of consumption.

This serves to reframe the use of indigenous artefact re-presented as contemporary art

confusing both the economic and cultural values associated with contemporary indigenous

cultural production. Illustrative of the homogenisation of cultural difference, Authenti-Kitsch

comments on the effects of the construction of collective cultural identities in relation to

Nation state identity: the stereotyping of both people and cultural difference.

Jess Paraone, 2011. Authenti-Kitsch, detail. [Slip cast porcelain, toner, water etched 21 x 18 x

18 cm.]. Collection of the artist.

Containment: The Vessel as Limitation

My use of the vessel as expressive of containment produced work that engaged with ceramic

histories used as metaphor for the socio-political issues I have been examining. Framed

within the politics of form, they are constructed from a preconceived idea that is given form

in the process of making. There is a familiarity and certainty in constructing a preconceived

idea that has existed in your mind, whether that idea is a kete or a vessel of one type or

another. All aspects of the making are largely resolved before the work begins and process in

this approach serves only to control the desired outcomes of the original idea. While the

Untitled series began as an engagement with risk and material processes in experiential ways,

use of material in the Authenti-Kitsch series was subordinated to the idea interrupting further

engagement with process.

Additionally, attempts to discuss the politics of culture and representation through my

work resulted in works that were either illustrative of the idea, or overloaded the objects

(usually a vessel) with dialog contained within the originating idea. Reception of both the

ideas underpinning the work and the viewer’s reading of the object was limited within the

complex form of the vessel which carried its own pluralistic histories and viewers inevitably

connected with their own histories of engagement with the vessel. Making work using this

approach presented similar limitations to my studio practice in ceramics as did the notion of

Contemporary Maori Art. A focus on the ideological issues I grappled with resulted in work

contained within ideas and the form of the vessel stifling further investigation of a material-

led practice that allowed for discovery through process.

Prompted by Robert Morris’s seminal essay, Some notes on the Phenomenology of

Making: The Search for the Motivated (1970), the Intervention series emerged as an initial

engagement with a material-led practice. Morris argued that a renewal of art would require

that it “stop playing with the given forms and methods and find a new way of making”

(Adamson, 2010. p. 541) and posits that a process led practice which engages with the

tendencies of both material and process creates possibilities for chance and accident to play a

part in forming the work. The shift in my practice from the politics of form to the politics of

material forming the work occurred through the removal of the ‘condition’ of the vessel as a

static form which ‘controls’ the liquid porcelain clay I use.

This has allowed the expressive potential of the materials and processes to emerge

within the construction of objects I make. This is a space of uncertainty where studio

research is often carried out in the absence of clearly defined targets, it is however, a

productive space that stretches the boundaries of what I know and the territory I work within.

The absence of a pre-conceived mould which the slip casting process is dependent on, opened

a space for the inherent uncertainty and risk that is present when conditions are unknown and

created possibilities for me to interact with the material qualities of liquid porcelain.

Intervention: Courting Uncertainty.

The inherent tendencies of porcelain are described in negative terms and it is widely regarded

as temperamental, difficult to work with, prone to warping, as likely to crack, and lacking in

‘plasticity’ due to its structural makeup. It does however have an amazing capacity to record

the marks of the making process, a characteristic usually controlled within conventional

construction of porcelain objects. It is these characteristics of the material that I capitalise on

in the act of intervening so as to modify process. The Intervention series emerged as result of

an experiential material inquiry that primarily examines the response of porcelain to process

interventions and investigates mark making that is mechanical (I make the mark) and mark

produced as an outcome of processes employed.

Jess Paraone, 2012. Interventions Series, detail, unfired. [Porcelain, black iron oxides,

underglaze, ceramic shell, toner. Dimensions variable]. Collection of the artist.

Experimenting with the mutability of clay between fluid and solid states, the

Intervention works emerged through the adaptation of the conventional processes used in

previous bodies of work and which through a process of creative inquiry, are reconfigured.

For instance, the three dimensional object was replaced with a flatbed picture frame in the

form of a porcelain slab. Raku clay used in the making of the original vessel form used to

construct the casting mould for the slip-cast vessel now occupies the space below the finished

porcelain object in the role of support. Oxides and colorants used in the glazing processes,

usually applied to a finished form, are assimilated into the porcelain through a process of

layering materials at the point of fabrication of the slab. Continuing the use of water etching

from the Untitled and Authenti-Kitsch series, I introduced abstract marks using ceramic shell

and printed binary code to the surface of the slabs post-casting. Through the additive and

reductive cycle of etching using water abrasion to the still fragile clay body, the marks I

impose on the form are altered as the clay body is washed away producing the mark of

process in the object.

Jess Paraone, 2012. Intervention Series unfired, detail. [Porcelain, black iron oxides,

underglaze, ceramic shell, toner. Dimensions variable]. Collection of the artist.

Intervention into the codes of practice of ceramics serves to construct a process which creates

tension in both the making process and the firing atmosphere as a form giving tool, which is

evident in the visual outcomes recorded within the Intervention series. Breakages, slumping

and the unforeseen events within the firing stages that are characteristic of working with

porcelain all have a part to play in the production of the work. The resulting objects of these

processes evidence a biography of their making which reflects the nature of the object crafted

through a material-led investigation.

Usually it has a starting point in the material and, even though an idea or a function

will precede the actual making of the object, the object itself is made when a maker,

designer or manufacturer forms the material into something tangible. (Gali, 2009).

This is evident in the Intervention works: the preconceived narrative or idea is slowly

eliminated from the decision making process in the construction of these objects as

engagement with the processes continues. For example: whereas an emphasis on aesthetic

placement of the various components is a concern of the work, (Intervention 1), material

response to those processes, inform future iterations where the results could not have been

pre-determined (Intervention 2). Process here emerges in the form of thinking through

material.

This process/material-led inquiry involved taking what I knew about the material and

interrogating the limits of the material within alterations to conventional process and within

the rigours of the firing atmosphere. The results are as unpredictable as the intuitive

processes of constructing the work requiring an attitude of risk and uncertainty that applies in

both the construction and firing stages of these objects. This requires both a letting go of

control and an acceptance of outcomes which are only fully revealed after the firing of the

clay body in excessive temperatures. The resulting visual language is a cyclic process of

interaction between my mark making, water/heat intervention and the immediacy and

plasticity of the clay to record these events. Constructed in the horizontal space of work

where printing and writing occur the resulting works are suggestive of both the pictorial

landscape and the written record of event, breaking down the distinctions between the

pictorial and the sculptural. As such they occupy an ambiguous position confusing

hierarchies of both material use and categorisation within ceramic paradigm constructing a

precarious position of the work. The notion of precarity emerges in the Intervention series as

a working methodology where experimentation and relevance are present through the

thinking through material, opening a space for what is not known. Thinking through material

has allowed an engagement with process where the results cannot be pre-determined and the

work has unfolded as part of a process. The result of this inquiry marks a transitory space in

my practice, where a gradual reduction of ideas provides space for discovery and the

unpredictable.

Jess Paraone, 2012. Intervention 1 [Slip cast porcelain, iron oxide, underglaze, photocopy

toner, celadon. Dimensions variable]. Collection of the artist.

Jess Paraone, 2012. Intervention 2. [Slip cast porcelain, iron oxide, underglaze, photocopy

toner, celadon. Dimensions variable]. Collection of the artist.

The Liminal Space: Material Forming Practice.

The Liminal series is a distillation of the materials and processes I have been examining to

date reduced to their most basic elements; white porcelain, raku clay and colour taken from

the surface of the object and embedded into the material. A palette of black and white is

suggestive of an assumed certainty, definitiveness: suggesting that “things are black and

white”. The work however, occupies the liminal space, metaphor for the transition from one

state to another. Located between the conventions of the ceramic vessel and process led art

that engages with uncertainty, the form is expressive of the interior volume and exterior form

inherent in the traditions of the ceramic vessel. Functionality in the Liminal objects however,

is as vehicles for encoded social, political and cultural relations.

Jess Paraone, 2012. Liminal 1. [Porcelain, raku clay, black stain, dimensions variable].

Collection of the artist.

Using clay from two distinct and opposing cultural conventions I collapse ideas of

cultural and artistic hierarchies engaging with the politics of each materials history and social

position. For example, Raku clay is used in the construction of Raku ware, a Japanese

cultural tradition dating back to the Fifteenth century. The practice of Raku has enjoyed the

same European fascination for those things of the “Orient” similarly to porcelain and was

transplanted and acculturated into European art practices through the work and teaching of

Bernard Leach in 1911. Whilst the traditions of porcelain equate beauty with refinement and

perfection of surface and form, Raku is more often associated with the Japanese philosophy

of Wabi Sabi: beauty through imperfection, incompletion, and impermanence. This

imperfection while valued within Japanese philosophy translates differently within Western

ideas of culture and value where porcelain enjoys an association with luxury goods and Raku

is held in the domain of studio craft or “low art”.

These material histories emerge through the work as metaphor for the cultural and

socio-political issues I have been examining and provide a vehicle in which to negotiate and

contest cultural and artistic hierarchical values through material investigation. Engaging with

the structural qualities of the clay, an investigation into difference and the relationship

between the parts of the form develops from within a process-led approach to making.

Continuing an inquiry into the strength and fragility of clay I take what is known about the

materials structural capacities and create an environment where the processes of construction

produce stresses to these capacities and plays a part in the resulting forms.

These cyclic stages of fragility and strength provide a useful starting point for my

interaction with the mutability of these materials: their ability to alter states from solid to

liquid throughout the making process, to fabricate form, and record the events of their

making. Employing a simple system of layering porcelain and raku slabs of clay together, a

scroll form is constructed through rolling the two layers into a cylindrical form, a repetitive

action which produces surprising variations in the resulting objects. Significant in this form

is the relationship that occurs between the two materials which are forced to interact within

the contained space of the scroll. The constriction of movement allowed each of the clays

produces a destabilising of the form through the drying, shrinking and firing stages. This sets

Jess Paraone, 2012. Liminal3. [Porcelain, raku clay, black stain, dimensions

variable].Collection of the artist.

Jess Paraone, 2012. Liminal3 detail. [Porcelain, raku clay, black stain, dimensions variable].

Collection of the artist.

up a condition of friction and tension within the firing processes that affects the visual

outcomes seen in the forms; cracks, breakage or the collapse of an entire form.

The processes used in making this form become the creative vehicle that informs

progressive iterations, constructing a cyclic dialogue between my interactions with the

materials inherent tendencies. For instance in early iterations the strength of unfired raku

clay was placed in the supporting role, beneath the porcelain to “manage” its fragility in the

fabrication stages. The results however, revealed raku as the fragile component in the firing

process resulting in rupturing of the form. Further iterations positioned porcelain in the lower

position resulting in forms which remained intact, the strength of fired porcelain preventing

collapse. Investigating volume or lack of volume within the scroll I use paper and cardboard

to support the clay bodies in the malleable stages. Allowing more freedom to manipulate the

rolled slabs this produced uncertainty and the element of surprise within the process. Unable

to see the activity beneath the supporting cardboard, results were only revealed post firing

revealing the impressions of both the cardboard and the movement between the clay bodies

within this constricted space.

Through manipulation of these materials using a repetitive action and a seemingly

simple form of the scroll, the concepts of autonomy and interdependence have emerged

through the work. The action of rolling two layers of clay together animates the relationships

between the parts of the form in an on-going dialog of interchangeability. Raku placed in the

lower position, in the role of support, becomes the supported through the act of rolling the

clay layers upon themselves. A perception of what is leading and what is following within

this movement becomes confused, reorganising hierarchical systems of ideas; inside becomes

outside, bottom becomes top and the supporter becomes the supported.

The Liminal works have emerged through a complex interaction between materials,

conceptions and traditions employing process as the creative vehicle. This constructs a cyclic

dialogue between my interactions with the materials inherent tendencies allowing new forms

and behaviours to be identified both within the forms fabricated and within my working

methodology. This transitory space in my practice has developed through a reduction of

conceptual ideas and reconfiguration of what is known within an experiential inquiry into

material characteristics and process.

Whilst the resulting forms in the Liminal series are evocative of the familiar vessel,

they present an ambiguous form that is open to multiple readings largely generated by the

marks of process in their fabrication that is reminiscent of the Raku aesthetic of

incompleteness and imperfection. There is a precarity within the making processes of these

simple forms, an uncertainty and ambiguity in the results that can be defined by Bourriaud’s

description of the precarious object: “An object is said to be precarious if it has no definitive

status and an uncertain future or final destiny: it is held in abeyance, waiting, surrounded by

irresolution. It occupies a transitory territory”. (Bourriaud, 2009a, p.3). This aptly describes

the objects of the Liminal series: work constructed through a process of precarity, where the

results are both undefined at the beginning and informs future work.

Located in the liminal space which I define as occupying a position at, or on both

sides of, a boundary or threshold, this space represents a period of ambiguity where ideas and

concepts are in a constant state of contestation and negotiation. A reflective space where

what has happened informs and directs what will happen; my current practice shifts from

casting a critical eye on the issues I have been grappling with, to a critical inquiry into a

material-led ceramic practice where the objects I make document an on-going dialog between

material and maker. This creates a position of both uncertainty and anticipation which is

rooted in the act of thinking through material.

Jess Paraone, 2012. Liminal 1. [Porcelain, raku clay, black stain, dimensions variable].

Collection of the artist.

Jess Paraone, 2012. Liminal 1 detail. [Porcelain, raku clay, black stain, dimensions variable].

Collection of the artist.

Conclusion

A discussion of my work reveals the shift between a focus on ideological constructs as a

primary concern to a deeper engagement with material. Whereas the initial approach

confined the making of artworks to that of the originating idea, material engagement has

become a vehicle to contest and negotiate those ideological structures I grapple with. This

has allowed an alternative approach to making sense of my position as an indigenous artist

whose practice has been formed within the post-colonial interface and is one which by

necessity disrupts privileged knowledge or challenges accepted practices from a critical

outlook.

The works analysed in this discussion operate from seemingly disparate spaces of

investigation: the vessel as containment, the ironic satire of commodity, the accidental mark

and the uncertainty of process. They each however relate to and emerge from a continuing

inquiry into the two distinct cultures that my practice orientates around: the ceramic canon

and indigenous cultural production and their respective positions within the contemporary art

field. Revealed as spaces of contestation and negotiation, each of these material-based

disciplines in turn orbit around European ideas of art, culture and ethnicity. Problematic with

this orientation is first; the authenticity maintained through the authority of culturally

constructed identities from an essentialist position and second; the resulting assimilation of

the hierarchical categorisations employed by Western art discourses that circumscribe the

place of these disciplines.

Through a complex interaction between materials, conceptions and traditions my

work has addressed these key issues that I confront as an artist engaged with the construction

of an artistic identity from a position of subjective agency. A critical inquiry into material

and the processes of fabrication has allowed a cultural sensibility to emerge in my practice as

an imperative in my interaction with material tendencies and behaviours. For me, cultural

sensibility offers a type of freedom from the limiting discourses that are inherent in the

politics of the two material cultures my practice navigates. It is however, a freedom that is

grounded in the real, personal experience against a background of collective identity.

This has resulted in work that is political and can be described as precarious in that “it

signifies a kind of resistance through its very form, rather than exclusively through its

content” (Ritter, 2010, p.2). It is work that reflects the inquiry that it has emerged from and

represents a deeper questioning about everything from its formal properties to its signification

to its very place in the world. Thinking through material has formed a practice that explores

the limitations of material and the boundaries of what is perceived as ceramic practice in the

contemporary as well as within the conception of Contemporary Maori Art. The thread

connecting these two genres of works is a continuing interrogation of material and form and a

willingness to engage with risk and discovery as a means of inspiration