CLINKER (WASTE)
MAYA DEW
24 FEBRUARY - 02 MARCH, 2023
The second of three Graduate residency exhibitions sees MAYA DEW present CLINKER (WASTE)
Clinker (Waste) showcases an eclectic selection of sculptures using materials locally sourced from the surrounding area, creating an installation reminiscent of Stoke-on-Trent’s working
history and how that continuously alters the land.
The materials of clay and coal became the livelihood of these six towns, with the occupation of mining and pottery shaping both Stoke-on-Trent’s economic and physical landscape. Decades has seen these towns drained of resource with residents having worked till breaking point, and in return many of the local spaces lie uninhabited and dilapidating.
This exhibition explores the continuous succession of history, accepting that the cycle of production and waste are the future geological layers that we leave to eventually become sediment beneath our feet. For areas like Stoke-on-Trent, the Industrial Revolution vastly affected everything for those living locally, determining generations of lives from their occupations, homes, to health. The mining, distribution and use of coal have forever affected the way we, as a society, produce, accumulate, and deal with objects especially those that we no longer deem as useful.
The gatherings of found materials that had been left discarded in disused sites surrounding Hanley became documentation of tangible remnants of the past, unearthing the potential lost stories of those before us. With numerous derelict sites surrounding the Stoke-on-Trent area, the access to such material was magnanimous with a constant resurgence of wrecked piles of soil, brick, shell, clinker, waiting, as they inevitably lie in and as waste.
Works shown interweave archival research and collected narratives. With the assistance of those working in the City Central Library archive, numerous accounts of miner’s accidents, working conditions and political movements against such circumstances, dating back to the 19th century, pieced together the history of the Local. Along the way, conversations with those residing locally altered and further enhanced these developing narratives.
Throughout the 6-month residency, the artist has continuously assembled and reflected on these varying accounts, placing, and entwining geological, folkloric, and historical tales into the surrounding areas. The entanglement of fact and fantasy, of found and fabrication considers what we leave behind in time, whether they be found by future generations or lost to the layers of sediment beneath our feet.
This archival collection of material and sculpture traverses over a multitude of narratives, considering the reality, the livelihoods, and the sacrifices of that from the pre-historic ages to our recent fore-bearers and now to ourselves. And as the exhibition chips and crumbles away, with no definite certainty endurance, we join those before us, and allow ourselves to be forgotten.
Maya Dew investigates the extraction and displacement of waste and organic material through urbanisation, and processes of post-industrialisation. Using discarded material found in skips, on roadsides, building sites and neglected areas of shrubland she constructs sculptural arrangements that become indexes of memory, experience, and identity.
Many pieces incorporate raw clay found at sites local to the artist, which are then hand processed, and clumps of organic material displaced and encased in relation to the context of work. The process of these sculptures is transformative, collecting fragments of the environment to create physical beings that incite a meeting of presence and ephemerality.
Having graduated in 2022 with a first-class honour in Fine Art from Kingston School of Art, she has now been selected for the AirSpace Graduate Residency 22/23 which culminating in her debut solo exhibition, Clinker (Waste).
@mayadew.art
REVIEW by ANNEKA FRENCH
Maya Dew’s exhibition Clinker (Waste) begins at the window of AirSpace Gallery with two well-chosen works which speak to the materials and subjects that are central to her thinking. The largest of these, Mr Peregrine; and the Immortal Essay which was Never Written (2023), combines both found and fabricated elements, and encapsulates the concerns Dew developed during her residency period at the gallery. Specifically, these are the twin contexts of the mining industry and ceramic manufacturing heritage that underpin Stoke-on-Trent geographically, economically and socially. Dew’s sculpture is structured around a large, dark wooden square, found locally on a disused brownfield site in Hanley, in which the artist has burnt and inscribed sections, and attached pieces of coal and unfired clay which were sourced nearby. Small pieces of paper that have torn away from archival documents on mining accidents and another piece which was embedded in clay Dew extracted are included, as are two postcard-sized paintings of shale pits painted with clay slip. A small pile of rocks and clinker (rock-like waste material composed of coal, clay and glaze) sits beneath. Dew synthesises different materials here. She also synthesises a range of stories, from organically developed conversations with elderly local resident whose father died after contracting tetanus from a ‘coaled cut’ sustained in mining, to the ideas of Chartist leader Thomas Cooper, from whose unwritten essay this work takes its title. In Cooper’s absent text, the titular character extolls the virtues of manufacturing enabled by the Industrial Revolution’s ‘golden age’, disregarding the labour of and lives lost from the invisible but vital working class. Mr Peregrine; and the Immortal Essay which was Never Written, like many of the other works included in the exhibition, is an elegy of sorts, with its form and assembled objects resembling a grave or memorial for individual lives, and for wider contexts of economic loss and ecological devastation.
Inside the gallery, two works are mounted upon what Dew describes as ‘coal plinths’, forms which are made from a mixture of coal and concrete slabs, cemented into heavy, tomb-like three-dimensional objects which platform other artworks. One of these, A Goblet's Stem and Bowl (2022), is a curious work, small and formed from a twisted stem of unfired clay with an oyster shell affixed on top. The shell, placed interior upwards, appears like an offering or an open palm, suggestive of some ancient local ritual. Even the origins of the oyster shells, which Dew excavated from among clay deposits close to the gallery, are themselves odd, with no clear answer as to why the oyster shells (and no other types of shell) might be present so many miles from the sea. The material Dew presents, like much of her work on display, is balanced by critical choice and by accident, with the oyster being a historically important British working-class foodstuff, by chance found within the clay itself. Dew notes that among the clay she extracted she also found iron nails and human hair. The clay, a record of the particles of organic matter it is formed of, is also a carrier, then, for other larger and more explicit objects. The clay is an index on multiple levels, imprinted by time, place, ecology and human usage.
Dew takes these ideas of time further forward in other sculptures that incorporate clay, specifically addressing the temporality of the works by dint of their material composition and physical ‘shelf life’. In Vestige: In Commemoration of what we Bury Beneath Us (2022/2023), for example, the life cycle of clay and the ephemerality of her works becomes apparent. In using unprocessed local clay with high deposits of limestone, visible as small white specks in the material, Dew embraces the instability of it. When fired, the limestone absorbs water, creating cracks in the clay that render it extremely fragile. The wall hung aspect of Vestige: In Commemoration of what we Bury Beneath Us is a partial recreation of the aspect which exists in broken pieces on the floor; a kind of mirror image of the before and after of the sculpture’s life. It is only a matter of time before the wall hung piece will crash, and subject to gravity, join its sister on the floor. Dew talks about this in terms of collections of objects, materials that might be used again in different forms and in different ways. Vestige (2023), tells a similar tale, comprised of an intact form with clear cracks again positioned close to a scatter of broken pieces. Dew talks about this in terms of collapse being the ‘decision’ or ‘will’ of the material. There is a return to dust, in a sort of death wish, perhaps, that mirrors the decay and failure of our own bodies, and indeed of all bodies.
The significance of the human body in relation to material is most evident in the floor-based work Vestige: I Rust until I am nothing but Dust (2022), composed of clay and a variety of heavily rusted found metal objects including a large spring and car parts that resemble bent limbs and a bladder. Accompanying these are more clay pieces, some positioned separately, and some positioned to drape over or support the corroded metal objects. Small additions of white glaze relate to the historic glazing of ceramics in Stoke-on-Trent at a time when ‘pure’ white bone china was especially desirable. The abuttal of ceramic and metal echoes a series of slides shown within Dew’s Public Exhibition Archive (2023) which document a number of small clay works made for and shown within the brownfield sites that Dew has been exploring and from which she has sourced much of her work. These places are fenced off or hoarded to prevent human access. Transgressing these disused and broken-down former manufacturing facilities has not only literally provided her with materials but also given her insight into the subsequent use of these sites, for instance, in the form of litter and personal belongings leftover from squatters, and in the rich biodiversity which is reclaiming these locations, finding new homes for life among the rubble of the past.
Anneka French is an independent curator and critic. She contributes to Art Quarterly, Burlington Contemporary and Photomonitor, and has had writing and editorial commissions for the Turner Prize, Fire Station Artists’ Studios, TACO!, Photoworks+ and Grain Projects. She worked as Co-ordinator and then Director at New Art West Midlands, as Editorial Manager of contemporary art magazine this is tomorrow and has worked at Tate Modern, Ikon, The New Art Gallery Walsall and Wolverhampton Art Gallery. French has curated exhibitions at Grand Union, Birmingham; KH7 ArtSpace, Aarhus, Denmark and Coventry Biennial. Her publication Gently Bumping was published in 2022.
Each year, AirSpace Gallery’s Graduate Residency Programme offers two new graduates a fantastic opportunity to be part of an exciting and innovative artist-led space in Stoke-on-Trent, providing 6 months free studio space, ongoing professional development support, mentoring and guidance in those crucial first months out of higher education, and an end-of-residency solo exhibition. Now into its 8th instalment, the residency programme is an attempt to tackle and highlight a problem with graduate retention in the city, offering early stage professional development support to artists.
Clinker (Waste) showcases an eclectic selection of sculptures using materials locally sourced from the surrounding area, creating an installation reminiscent of Stoke-on-Trent’s working
history and how that continuously alters the land.
The materials of clay and coal became the livelihood of these six towns, with the occupation of mining and pottery shaping both Stoke-on-Trent’s economic and physical landscape. Decades has seen these towns drained of resource with residents having worked till breaking point, and in return many of the local spaces lie uninhabited and dilapidating.
This exhibition explores the continuous succession of history, accepting that the cycle of production and waste are the future geological layers that we leave to eventually become sediment beneath our feet. For areas like Stoke-on-Trent, the Industrial Revolution vastly affected everything for those living locally, determining generations of lives from their occupations, homes, to health. The mining, distribution and use of coal have forever affected the way we, as a society, produce, accumulate, and deal with objects especially those that we no longer deem as useful.
The gatherings of found materials that had been left discarded in disused sites surrounding Hanley became documentation of tangible remnants of the past, unearthing the potential lost stories of those before us. With numerous derelict sites surrounding the Stoke-on-Trent area, the access to such material was magnanimous with a constant resurgence of wrecked piles of soil, brick, shell, clinker, waiting, as they inevitably lie in and as waste.
Works shown interweave archival research and collected narratives. With the assistance of those working in the City Central Library archive, numerous accounts of miner’s accidents, working conditions and political movements against such circumstances, dating back to the 19th century, pieced together the history of the Local. Along the way, conversations with those residing locally altered and further enhanced these developing narratives.
Throughout the 6-month residency, the artist has continuously assembled and reflected on these varying accounts, placing, and entwining geological, folkloric, and historical tales into the surrounding areas. The entanglement of fact and fantasy, of found and fabrication considers what we leave behind in time, whether they be found by future generations or lost to the layers of sediment beneath our feet.
This archival collection of material and sculpture traverses over a multitude of narratives, considering the reality, the livelihoods, and the sacrifices of that from the pre-historic ages to our recent fore-bearers and now to ourselves. And as the exhibition chips and crumbles away, with no definite certainty endurance, we join those before us, and allow ourselves to be forgotten.
Maya Dew investigates the extraction and displacement of waste and organic material through urbanisation, and processes of post-industrialisation. Using discarded material found in skips, on roadsides, building sites and neglected areas of shrubland she constructs sculptural arrangements that become indexes of memory, experience, and identity.
Many pieces incorporate raw clay found at sites local to the artist, which are then hand processed, and clumps of organic material displaced and encased in relation to the context of work. The process of these sculptures is transformative, collecting fragments of the environment to create physical beings that incite a meeting of presence and ephemerality.
Having graduated in 2022 with a first-class honour in Fine Art from Kingston School of Art, she has now been selected for the AirSpace Graduate Residency 22/23 which culminating in her debut solo exhibition, Clinker (Waste).
@mayadew.art
REVIEW by ANNEKA FRENCH
Maya Dew’s exhibition Clinker (Waste) begins at the window of AirSpace Gallery with two well-chosen works which speak to the materials and subjects that are central to her thinking. The largest of these, Mr Peregrine; and the Immortal Essay which was Never Written (2023), combines both found and fabricated elements, and encapsulates the concerns Dew developed during her residency period at the gallery. Specifically, these are the twin contexts of the mining industry and ceramic manufacturing heritage that underpin Stoke-on-Trent geographically, economically and socially. Dew’s sculpture is structured around a large, dark wooden square, found locally on a disused brownfield site in Hanley, in which the artist has burnt and inscribed sections, and attached pieces of coal and unfired clay which were sourced nearby. Small pieces of paper that have torn away from archival documents on mining accidents and another piece which was embedded in clay Dew extracted are included, as are two postcard-sized paintings of shale pits painted with clay slip. A small pile of rocks and clinker (rock-like waste material composed of coal, clay and glaze) sits beneath. Dew synthesises different materials here. She also synthesises a range of stories, from organically developed conversations with elderly local resident whose father died after contracting tetanus from a ‘coaled cut’ sustained in mining, to the ideas of Chartist leader Thomas Cooper, from whose unwritten essay this work takes its title. In Cooper’s absent text, the titular character extolls the virtues of manufacturing enabled by the Industrial Revolution’s ‘golden age’, disregarding the labour of and lives lost from the invisible but vital working class. Mr Peregrine; and the Immortal Essay which was Never Written, like many of the other works included in the exhibition, is an elegy of sorts, with its form and assembled objects resembling a grave or memorial for individual lives, and for wider contexts of economic loss and ecological devastation.
Inside the gallery, two works are mounted upon what Dew describes as ‘coal plinths’, forms which are made from a mixture of coal and concrete slabs, cemented into heavy, tomb-like three-dimensional objects which platform other artworks. One of these, A Goblet's Stem and Bowl (2022), is a curious work, small and formed from a twisted stem of unfired clay with an oyster shell affixed on top. The shell, placed interior upwards, appears like an offering or an open palm, suggestive of some ancient local ritual. Even the origins of the oyster shells, which Dew excavated from among clay deposits close to the gallery, are themselves odd, with no clear answer as to why the oyster shells (and no other types of shell) might be present so many miles from the sea. The material Dew presents, like much of her work on display, is balanced by critical choice and by accident, with the oyster being a historically important British working-class foodstuff, by chance found within the clay itself. Dew notes that among the clay she extracted she also found iron nails and human hair. The clay, a record of the particles of organic matter it is formed of, is also a carrier, then, for other larger and more explicit objects. The clay is an index on multiple levels, imprinted by time, place, ecology and human usage.
Dew takes these ideas of time further forward in other sculptures that incorporate clay, specifically addressing the temporality of the works by dint of their material composition and physical ‘shelf life’. In Vestige: In Commemoration of what we Bury Beneath Us (2022/2023), for example, the life cycle of clay and the ephemerality of her works becomes apparent. In using unprocessed local clay with high deposits of limestone, visible as small white specks in the material, Dew embraces the instability of it. When fired, the limestone absorbs water, creating cracks in the clay that render it extremely fragile. The wall hung aspect of Vestige: In Commemoration of what we Bury Beneath Us is a partial recreation of the aspect which exists in broken pieces on the floor; a kind of mirror image of the before and after of the sculpture’s life. It is only a matter of time before the wall hung piece will crash, and subject to gravity, join its sister on the floor. Dew talks about this in terms of collections of objects, materials that might be used again in different forms and in different ways. Vestige (2023), tells a similar tale, comprised of an intact form with clear cracks again positioned close to a scatter of broken pieces. Dew talks about this in terms of collapse being the ‘decision’ or ‘will’ of the material. There is a return to dust, in a sort of death wish, perhaps, that mirrors the decay and failure of our own bodies, and indeed of all bodies.
The significance of the human body in relation to material is most evident in the floor-based work Vestige: I Rust until I am nothing but Dust (2022), composed of clay and a variety of heavily rusted found metal objects including a large spring and car parts that resemble bent limbs and a bladder. Accompanying these are more clay pieces, some positioned separately, and some positioned to drape over or support the corroded metal objects. Small additions of white glaze relate to the historic glazing of ceramics in Stoke-on-Trent at a time when ‘pure’ white bone china was especially desirable. The abuttal of ceramic and metal echoes a series of slides shown within Dew’s Public Exhibition Archive (2023) which document a number of small clay works made for and shown within the brownfield sites that Dew has been exploring and from which she has sourced much of her work. These places are fenced off or hoarded to prevent human access. Transgressing these disused and broken-down former manufacturing facilities has not only literally provided her with materials but also given her insight into the subsequent use of these sites, for instance, in the form of litter and personal belongings leftover from squatters, and in the rich biodiversity which is reclaiming these locations, finding new homes for life among the rubble of the past.
Anneka French is an independent curator and critic. She contributes to Art Quarterly, Burlington Contemporary and Photomonitor, and has had writing and editorial commissions for the Turner Prize, Fire Station Artists’ Studios, TACO!, Photoworks+ and Grain Projects. She worked as Co-ordinator and then Director at New Art West Midlands, as Editorial Manager of contemporary art magazine this is tomorrow and has worked at Tate Modern, Ikon, The New Art Gallery Walsall and Wolverhampton Art Gallery. French has curated exhibitions at Grand Union, Birmingham; KH7 ArtSpace, Aarhus, Denmark and Coventry Biennial. Her publication Gently Bumping was published in 2022.
Each year, AirSpace Gallery’s Graduate Residency Programme offers two new graduates a fantastic opportunity to be part of an exciting and innovative artist-led space in Stoke-on-Trent, providing 6 months free studio space, ongoing professional development support, mentoring and guidance in those crucial first months out of higher education, and an end-of-residency solo exhibition. Now into its 8th instalment, the residency programme is an attempt to tackle and highlight a problem with graduate retention in the city, offering early stage professional development support to artists.
