DRY, UNFIRED LEFTOVER clay and waste containers filled with glaze – how can this be material for reflexion? In short, reflective and accessible texts spanning the fields of systematics and poetics Katrine Køster Holst writes about various aspects of her artistic work: use of materials, work processes, education and training, inspirations and coincidences. Through clay, thought- provoking connections between people, landscape and nature are formed.
English translation by Christine O´Hagan
Supported by the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme
The Clay 1/11
THE CERAMIC DEPARTMANT´S workshop technician was in the process of clearing up and moving some Euro pallets around. They were filled with dry, unfired leftover clay. […] There were all kinds of clay in the pallets: red, yellow, brown, greyish to white, both fine and coarse qualities and between these there were also pure chunks of porcelain […] I asked the workshop technician if I could buy one of the pallets and he said I could just take it.
Siershahn, Germany, September 2016. We have been walking on a gravel road for a quarter of an hour. Now we are standing at the edge of a staircase-like excavation area... Read more (pdf) >
Imprints 2/11
I TRAVEL TO Denmark to see Alexandra Engelfriet ́s latest performance and installation Skinned […] As I am standing there, silently, in the space between two rooms, reading the text, I hear, and notice, sounds and activity from both sides. The sound of squelching mud and splashing water.
On this journey back two images stood out in my mind: Engelfriet photographed in clay up to her ankles and Asger Jorn driving a scooter on top of a large plate of raw clay… Read more (pdf) >
The Snowbank 3/11
I WALK ALONG the side of the road. On the asphalt, scattered ice spots remain in places where the sun’s rays have not yet penetrated. The snowplough has cleared the road and at the side of the road the snow is lying in a compact, vertical bank just over a metre tall. The clean-cut flank of the snowbank facing the road reveals wavy lines of contamination in shades of grey captured between thick and thin… Read more (pdf) >
The Glaze Waste 4/11
I FINISH FILMING in the glaze laboratory and look more closely at a ten-litre bucket that is standing on the floor. It is labelled «Waste Glaze» with large, quickly written letters. The bottom is covered with clumps of indistinguishable ingredients that are swimming around in a multi-coloured porridge-like mass. In the laboratory, the contrast between the waste and the clean ingredients; i.e., powder in steel drawers, becomes so significant. When pure ingredients are mixed, they are usually transformed into something with added value. In the case of the ceramicist, they become glaze, but once the ingredients are mixed, the process cannot be reversed […] I started to take an interest in the buckets. As with all other types of waste, one can read and interpret a lot from the contents. In the bucket lay the ceramic department’s in- correctly mixed glazes and residual products, but therein, there were also many other questions… >
On a small island in Oslo fjord there was once a large limestone quarry. Work, i.e. extraction of the limestone, started in 1899 and was one of Norway’s largest operators until it was shut down in 1985. Then, the island of Langøya was hollowed out for limestone and abandoned, leaving two deep craters that descended 80 metres below sea level. The craters were open for several years, and because the sea- water did not penetrate through the crater walls, after many geotechnical investigations, it was established that they were suitable as a landfill for the disposal of environmentally hazardous and inorganic industrial waste... Read more (pdf)>
The Oak tree 5/11
I RECOGNIZED THE “rhythm” from a previous project that I called the “Timber log project”, which I worked on from 2009–2013. I sawed and sawed in discarded wood, shredded it into tiny pieces and assembled it again. The project started at a sawmill where I worked for a month, because I wanted to investigate the tree’s internal structures […] The ceramic slab suddenly became a piece of wood … and when I saw this connection, another thing fell into place; to talk about a form that grows – grows according to systems… Read more (pdf)>
Quick Clay 6/11
We lean our bikes against a temporary fence that cordons off the area. There are excavators here, but no signs of activity. Nobody in sight. We go close to the destroyed houses. An upturned car is lying on its roof. Trees have been pulled up from the ground; they lie there with their roots exposed to the elements, encrusted with soil and clay […] I walk up close to the mountain wall at the edge of the land- slide. It is covered with a thin layer of crackled light blue clay. The clay is clean, and I imagine how it ran down over the side of the mountain like a thin soup, without resistance. I photograph the area, detached, as if I was documenting the place. Then, I stand in front of the mountain wall and set the camera to self-timer; a 10-second delay. I am framed in the shots with my back to the camera in front of the wall of clay. My hand touches the clay. The touch of it makes me feel sick, nauseous and dizzy. I hurry away from the landslide; I cycle quickly on the gravel road...Read more (pdf)>
The Potter´s Wheel 7/11
JOHAN WAS GOOD at throwing, so good that he could tell us that he had participated in the World Championship in throwing. I never found out whether he had been behind the potter’s wheel or among the audience, or if the championship even existed, but it did not matter. The point is that he created the idea that one could become a champion in the discipline that I was learning. This was something I had not thought of before, but it was in fact clear if you looked closely at the educational goals: we should be competitive, trained and so skilled that we could, at some point in the future, run a business based on market demand.
Since attending the pottery school, a few years have passed, and I am doing my Master’s degree at Bergen National Academy of the Arts6. I have gradually moved away from functional ceramics and am in the middle of a process where I am challenging my established ways of thinking in my quest for a distinctive standpoint. To approach this, I have begun to investigate ceramic techniques from previous educations. Among other things, I am investigating the potter’s wheel… Read more (pdf)>
The Caves 8/11
As we stand with the water up over our knees and almost have to shout at each other because of the noise of the water, Iain tells me about the processes that lie behind the forms. With the lan- tern, Iain shines the light in different directions and explains how the water flow is eating into the soluble limestone, and that current ripples and scallops are different in size and look depending on the water’s speed, turbulence, the directions of the current and the rock’s porosity… Read more (pdf)>
[The Kiln 9/11]
In 2012, I applied to the European Ceramic Workcentre (EKWC) to work with glaze. The time at the centre was intended to be a research period that was based on the questions «Why had the glaze disappeared from my ceramics?» and «How could it (possibly) come back?» I had always liked working with glaze chemistry, and this was something I really missed in my work. But, as I was no longer working with functional objects, and was not interested in using the glaze as a decorative, artistic element, it was simply very difficult to understand what role glaze had to play in my work.
[…] Ten to twelve people are sitting around the long table in the communal kitchen. Some of us are artists; others are technicians and assistants. We all come from many different countries, and the conversations go off in many different directions in several different languages. An artist tells us that if we want to see the Netherlands at its most beautiful, then it is now while the tulips are in flower. In a few weeks they will have withered.
[…]There are many visiting tourists; they are on the roadside and are photographing one of the country’s most iconic motifs. I do the same thing. First with a camera, standing still, then at speed from the bike’s luggage rack where the camera is set on the self-timer. The photo- graphs are blurred, and it is on purpose. They should render the feeling of moving at speed through a field of colour… Read more (pdf) >
[Formula 10/11]
I have heard myself say to visitors who have curiously asked about the glazes: «It’s an old archive, almost twenty years, and I’m in the process of examining what and how the glaze samples – especially the aspect of working with formulas – have meant and how it has affected my thinking in other contexts … » When the conversations have become longer, I have picked up a glaze sample from one of the rows and explained what the inscribed numbers and letter codes mean…Read more (pdf)>
[Sisyphos 11/11]
The gods had condemned Sisyphus to cease- lessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight.
I visualise the scene: Sisyphus, the stone and the mountain. The human body and the piece of rock in contact and in motion. I imagine how the three interconnected elements leave their trace on one another. The animate, supple body; the static, heavy form of the rock; the open landscape. The judgment for the work he has to do has been handed down: Sisyphus must roll the stone up the mountain, again and again, and it will roll down, again and again. His punishment is to continue this infinite cycle for the rest of his life. His sentence is seemingly a repetition of the same trivial repetitive action, but the scenario will, nevertheless, change over time. Sisyphus will grow older, the stone will become rounder, and the impression in the landscape will become deeper.
The stone awaits him. He bends his muscular body and grabs the stone with his big hands. I look at the surface of the hand; the skin is stretched and becomes bluish around the muscles in all of the joints around the blood vessels and tendons, which rise in a relief pattern. Against the grey and rough surface of the stone, his hands are smooth. The stone is compact where it lies heavily on the loose earth. How did it get its shape? Where did it come from? I look around. It is lying on an arid field; it must have been moved. It may have been stuck in a swirling current in a nearby river, rounded by circular motions against neighbouring stones, or brought thousands of kilometres across land by a glacier. A hundred years, a thousand years, millions. Once it was a part of something bigger, now it has become an entity unto itself, cut off and rounded at the edges. Sisyphus gathers his strength and pushes the stone into motion. Behind him an impression has been left: his own footprints in a compressed furrow in the compacted earth.
I look at his footprint... Read more (pdf)>
If you want the texts in book format, they are collected in the publication “The Clay and other essays”. The book can be ordered online (price 240 NOK) B*stard Kunstbokhandel >
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