“All through this time I had a strange feeling… of something in the background, something hanging over me. I don’t know if it was the presence of ‘vibrations’ of all those pots, coming in one vast lump, at your house. I’ve tried to tell various people about it… but can’t convey the experience.” – Quote from potter Michael Casson following a visit to W.A. Ismay’s house
“It is very easy to condemn such acquisition as selfish… but actually the process is more like being possessed than possessing” – Quote from W.A. Ismay about the experience of owning such a number of pots
About the work
The product of a residency at the Gallery supported by York Museums Trust and SLAP York, Cease to impose territorial boundaries is a new performance work by artist Natalie McKeown. The piece comes as a response to York Art Gallery’s exhibition The Yorkshire Tea Ceremony, which uncovers details of the life and collection of W.A. Ismay.
Cease to impose territorial boundaries explores the landscape of the W.A. Ismay collection from a phenomenological perspective – considering both the human aspect (the experience of taking part in Ismay’s ‘tea ceremony’ ritual, an intimate and intensely personal event) and the physical/metaphysical aspect (the experience of being surrounded by a physical accumulation of clay from around the earth), as well as the crossover between these worlds – Ismay himself spoke about the importance of the hands of one person making a pot from start to finish, leaving a personal imprint on the earthly material. The performance looks at the collection in the context of that tactile connection from maker, to collector, to tea drinker, exploring how the permanence of objects that are required for a fleeting ritual brings physical grounding to an ephemeral experience.
Natalie’s performance seeks to close the circle between Ismay’s tea ceremonies of the past, and the present-day showing of his collection. Using newly-commissioned ceramics from Wakefield (Ismay’s place of birth and where he and his collection were situated), the clay life cycle will be completed by a return to the earth.
Audience information
This is a durational performance that will take place upstairs at York Art Gallery. It is free to attend and you can come and go as much as you like during the performance. The performance is free to attend and there is no need to book.
About the artist
Natalie studied at Glasgow School of Art and now lives and works in York. Her work has been exhibited in Chongqing, York, Glasgow, London and Oxford. Natalie works across performance, sculpture, printmaking and painting, playing with themes of chemical reactions, chance happenings and ritual routines. Tactility and shared experiential sensation are key factors in her performance practice and a constant theme underpinning her work is the idea of making the familiar unfamiliar, and the unfamiliar familiar: centring the absurd and making the viewer do a double take. Alongside her practice Natalie is an advocate for community arts and has been delivering arts projects and workshops since 2014.