CHICHESTER.- Over the course of 27 August – 8 November, Cass Sculpture Foundation will unveil an exhibition of new works produced through a new, open-source sculpture in the form of wood-burning outdoor kiln. Intended to provide a permanent resource for artists and ceramicists, as well as acting as an artwork in itself, the kiln’s first project will be to fire new ceramic works by a group of 10 of the UK’s most talented artists.

CASS invited artists Alex Hoda and Robert Rush to guest curate an exhibition of contemporary artists working in ceramics. The new works, each commissioned by CASS, will be fired on site, and exhibited in the organisation’s Main Gallery.

Each work will explore the theme of Rough Music. The term refers to the English folk practice, common in the 18th and 19th centuries, whereby individuals who had offended the community through some domestic misdemeanour were publicly ridiculed by rowdy and cacophonous performances conducted by mobs outside their homes. Effigies were often involved, as were rhymes, songs, insults, crude theatre and the banging of pots and pans. In many ways, rough music was a vernacular form of vigilante satire – and equivalent rituals existed in many other countries.

Following this theme, and with the intention of exploring ‘the expressive, aesthetic or conceptual potential available within failure, accident and the arbitrary’.

Each of the selected artists will be responding to the theme in their own personal way, participating in the rough-music tradition by producing new ceramic works that bear the marks of domesticity and absurdity.

Alongside their new works for Rough Music, each artist will also fire wasters in the kiln at Cass Sculpture Foundation. These wasters will be the subject of an exhibition at London-based gallery Edel Assanti (8 September to 3 October). Wasters are items that fail in the firing and therefore regarded as waste items. However, in the common parlance of wood firing, the term has now come to refer to any piece of ceramic whose primary function is utilitarian, to keep the chamber temperature even. These wasters often have a secondary function as an amusement to their maker.

Exhibiting Artists
• Aaron Angell • Mark Essen • Alex Hoda and Robert Rush • Paulina Michnowska • Laure Prouvost • Giles Round • Jackson Sprague •Adam Sutherland • Bedwyr Williams • Jesse Wine

Featured Works
The 10 artists selected (and the guest curators themselves) have all submitted proposals to the Kiln Project, and the final exhibition promises to present an astonishing range of ideas, techniques and approaches to ceramic art. Highlights include:

 Winner of the 2013 Turner Prize for her immersive work ‘Wantee’, French-born artist Laure Prouvost works in installation, collage and film, often raising questions about the modern generation’s relationship to the past. For ‘Rough Music’, she will extend the ‘Wantee’ universe through the creation of a tabletop of 12 ceramic tiles, each containing a different component (cruet sets, drinking vessels, plates, funnels…), in order to tell a domestic story about the tension between her fictionalised grandparents and raise questions about the relationship between art and functionality.

 An artist who operates at the meeting point of art and stand-up comedy, Bedwyr Williams plays with autobiographical details, the banalities of everyday life and notions of otherness in his highly memorable works. His piece, a pickle jar cast from his own head, ‘features elements from the forgotten cultures of human sacrifice, curious hats and the wearing of earrings in Wales.’

 A London-based artist currently working in ceramics, Jesse Wine is interested in exploring human interactions and behaviours through both clay and the structure of an exhibition. He proposes to create a suspended dining scene – a kiln-fired domestic mobile – and is excited about the possibilities of all-over glazing that the Cass Sculpture Foundation’s kiln-firing process offers.

 Project curators Alex Hoda and Robert Rush will use ‘Rough Music’ to explore notions of whimsy and utility through the creation of a number of jugs – styled in tribute to the ‘worthless’ mediaeval pottery of the 11th –16th century. Several of these will be designed as ‘puzzle jugs’. Riddled with hidden spouts and holes, and purposefully impractical, these were generally used for drinking games – the user would attempt to consume their drink without spillage. Despite the low status afforded to such wares, they form the basis of much of the great English pottery tradition – and are thus comparable to the evolution from rough music to high satire.