Angela Tait is a mixed media ceramics artist and current PhD researcher at the University of Sunderland and the National Glass Centre. Angela’s practice investigates the relationship between creative practice and domestic obligations.
On Saturday July 3rd 2021, Angela created her performance piece ‘Smalls’ at Aberystwyth Arts Centre, a work that plays on the idea of cyclical time through the visuals of the potter’s wheel and the washing machine. A series of leather hard ceramic bowls thrown by Angela and visiting volunteers were strung up throughout the course of the day outside the Arts Centre’s ceramics studio to create an installation that references lines of washing hung out to dry.
‘The work is called ‘smalls’ referencing both the size of each vessel and the colloquial expression of ‘washing your smalls’…the viewer sees the process unfold in real time, complete with all its rhythms and interruptions. The washing lines slowly fill up with raw clay vessels taken straight from the potters’ wheel. As they start to dry out they are punctured with small holes to enable additions of coloured ribbon, fabric and embroidery thread to be added. This is done on the ‘in between’ times when the throwing must be stopped to attend to the finishing. A rhythm starts to develop between the artist and the work, backwards and forwards between parts of the making process.’
