In Stone Appreciation: Booth, visitors were invited to test the possibilities and frustrations of making collaboratively through clay. Two small screens on top of the booth showed a sequence of images of a free-standing erratic boulder.
Working in pairs, participants had twenty minutes to model a likeness of this complex natural form from a block of clay without seeing what they were doing or speaking to one another. A camera filmed the activity from the front of the booth. The resulting soft clay forms were displayed in a damp store/vitrine before being replaced each week by a new group of works, while a video of the modelling ran continuously throughout the month-long exhibition.
Feedback suggested that this wordless negotiation through clay could be both strangely intimate and absorbing. It also exposed frustration, rivalry and markedly different approaches to the task. Participants who had not previously met often described developing a sense of connection and camaraderie, while almost everyone reported a strong sense of shared ownership, pride and fascination in the final form — however ungainly, and however little it resembled the boulder that had prompted the collaboration.
This project was supported by research funding from the University of the Arts London.