A new body of work by artist Lily German that explores the tactility of wet clay, ceramics, and the voice across contemporary forms of art and music.
Photo credit: Rosie Lonsdale
Image Description: The artist is standing on a green field next to a body of water with industrial machinery in the background. The artist is holding and working a piece of wet sculpted clay in her hands.
Photo credit: Rosie Lonsdale
Image Description: An artist studio table with wet sculpted clay and various clay moulding tools sitting on top. The clay sculpture is shaped into two pear-shaped forms which are connected at the top.
Photo credit: Rosie Lonsdale
Image Description: A close up image of two hands holding a piece of wet sculpted clay that wraps around the palms. The clay has various finger marks along it’s surface.
In this project, Lily German is building upon her current performance practice to contribute to the ways in which grief, loss, and the experience of mourning might be researched through the making of new artworks which combine performance and ceramic sculpture. Recent works have explored the shared fragilities and tactility of wet clay, ceramics and the voice. At times guttural and other times soft, whispering, the artist uses elements of the sung and spoken to communicate emotion and physicality in performance. The voice resonates through the body by breath and by vibration of sound. German has been investigating how both ceramic sculpture and the body can act as resonant vessels that embody the human experience of grief.
German explains in more detail: ‘I pursued this research as I am interested in the embodiment of grief, corporeality and the living body being a vessel of memory and loss. In Western Culture and Society, there are normative societal expectations that surround grief and a lack of support within communities, the experience can be awkward, traumatic, negative but also transformative. How can ceramics and the voice be used in a way which speaks to the contemporary experience of grief and mourning?’
Throughout this period of research, the artist focused on experimentation with voice, film documentation, workshopping, and performance development. Working closely with Singer Patricia Auchterlonie, she received vocal tuition to support investigations into the voice, build on vocal training that she has had in the past and negotiated extended vocal techniques in pursuit of new sounds. This opened new explorations into different formerly unknown territories of her singing and speaking voice. For example, as German notes, ‘I have found new areas within my chest voice (an embodied presence) whilst voice-making and have discovered new findings around breath. Investigating the capabilities of my voice has transformed my experience of bereavement and has encouraged me to explore collective mourning through voice and the practice of death wailing across different cultures.’
In the studio, German then began developing sculptural work that will be activated through live performance. The artist has been testing new glazes, investigating surface qualities and hand-building new forms to simulate a flesh-like and alluring surface quality. The forms have been created with the intention to explore the shared ability of the voice and ceramics sculpture to resonate in a space.
As a new strand of research around expressions of grief, the project asks: how does an understanding or expression of grief and loss manifest through art? To investigate collective mourning and the ability of performance to represent it, German is currently developing a script which will involve both untrained and trained voices, seeking out the range of qualities that can be expressed through the human voice. It is hoped that film documentation captured during this project can be used to bring communities experiencing grief together through an appropriate digital platform.
Some outputs generated from this research were channelled in Loose Ends (24 Feb-10 Mar 2024), a group exhibition curated by Lily German, which celebrated ceramics, performance and textiles.
Lily German
Lily German is an Artist making sculpture, writing and performance that explores the shared fragilities and tactility of wet clay, ceramics, and the human voice.
Lily solidifies passing, palpable, bodily moments and movements into her work; hands push in, fingers break through the clay’s cold flesh. Each mark made remains, becomes preserved in ceramic form.
Pressing at the limits of material, Lily’s sculptures hold within them the anticipation of their own breaking. Like clay, the voice breaks, is vulnerable if not supported. At times guttural and other times soft, whispering, German uses sung and spoken elements to communicate emotion and physicality. Both the untrained and trained voice are used to speak to the human experience of grief and loss.
