Patchwork Artist Talk - Ciara Neufeldt & Oren Shoesmith -Wayward Clay: Communing with disobedience

Wayward Clay: Communing with disobedience 

Wayward Clay: communing with disobedience is a talk about how working with clay can teach us tools for community resourcing, especially in practices of resistance and liberation work. We will look at a personal clay mythography which will take us through contemporary industrial clay mining, early trans and gender non-conforming internet archives, and religious and folk medicine practices.  We will find guidance for our journey from Edouard Glissant and his ideas on archipelagic thinking, as well as other thinkers on the path towards collective liberation.

Patchwork is a collaborative project that brings together artists and participants, using clay as both catalyst and a connector. It is part of Ciara Neufeldt’s Mosaics and Ceramic Tilework Residency at the V&A. Ciara is exploring how ceramics can create joyful, inclusive spaces, and invites people to collaborate, play, and make with her.  

   

Ciara will be collaborating with artists Oren Shoesmith, Hannah Sabapathy, Tyreis Holder, and Joanne Dawson, for a series of talks exploring shared themes across diverse practices. Ciara will also deliver four clay-based workshops. 

Oren Shoesmith is an artist and writer from Cornwall, living in Glasgow. He works in an entangled way between clay, poetry, performance and film. Oren’s current research is focussed on industrial histories of clay mining, land dispossession, and re-imagining devotional earth-based practices through decolonial ethics.