Factory, 22 April 2017 - 28 May 2017, Icheon World Ceramic Center, South Korea

Factory is a performative installation that reflects upon notions of place, skill, people and material objects left behind following the process of industrial change. Since the 1970’s and 1980’s, progressive deindustrialisation that occurred in many countries in Western Europe and the United States has led to much of traditional manufacture being replaced by tertiary industry. As many of Stoke-on-Trent’s ceramic factories have been substituted by service, retail and distribution sectors, there exists a break in the passing on of trans-generational skill, and with few apprenticeships a danger of specific skills disappearing. The opportunity to perform several of these endangered practices in South Korea – a country that gives status to individuals with exceptional artistic ability to preserve cultural heritage, provides a prestigious platform to raise greater awareness of the intangible heritage associated with industrial craft practices in the very nation where the industrial revolution began