Comrade Corbyn's Allotment, 2018

Another excuse to satirise Labour Party politics of 2015-20 and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, in particular. It seems unbelievable and horrifying now that he could have held that position for so long.  The background to this pot is the attempted murder in 2018 of former military officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury - presumably on Putin's orders - using the nerve agent, Novichok. There was a repeat use of this chemical weapon that killed two UK citizens. Corbyn refused to condemn Russia for an attack that might have resulted in the mass poisoning of much of the population of a British city. 

Comrade Corbyn's Allotment, (based on Mary Mary Quite Contrary): 

Comrade Corbyn

Puppet of Putin

How’s your allotment grow?

With Novichok

PIE

Antisemites and a

Spy

Poisoning pretty maids

And then

Lying

Low.

Corbyn leans on his spade, a basket of beetroot at his feet. There's a story in that but it is a minor detail for this pot, anyway. Shami Shakrabati waters the allotment as Niobe, 'all tears,' as she fondly strokes an Ermine and John Mcdonnell is wheeling away the skull harvest in his barrow. 

Death calls by and does a final sweep. 

The Ballad of Sister Bergdorf, 2018

A Pilgrim vase - about 30 x 30 cm approx

Some Background 

The Ballad of Sister Bergdorf grew out my observation that an unholy coupling had occurred between religion and politics. 'Art discourse' was one of its most obnoxious offspring. I have discussed 'cultural appropriation,' since the 1980s, theorised 'appropriately,' particularly on ceramics, since the 1990s, debated with feminists on transgender politics, among other things, since the late 1990s, and argued with transactivists since the early 2000s. I've held forth on social media - mostly on Facebook -  about all of it since 2010. I have even been described as a 'veteran of the culture wars,' by the writer Jo Bartosch so, if that doesn't convince you that I am familiar with this territory, nothing will. It took some time to find my satirical voice - or at least to find a way to express it on pots - but the jugs that I started making in 2015 gave vent to the first collection of work that deals directly with the increasing madness of politics. Looking back now, I can see the satire clearly enough in Nightwalker, (2014,) and there are probably hints before that. 

About the politics

When politics walked through the looking glass and the Labour Party appointed Munroe Bergdorf, a transwoman, as their advisor on 'LGBT' issues, it was time to respond. Bergdorf isn't gay. Transgender isn't gay - it isn't about who you love, it's about how you see yourself. Bergdorf has had vast amounts of radical and cosmetic surgery to make her body resemble an idealised, porn-woman. 'She' lives as she imagines a woman might, but she is not female - or as we used to say, 'a woman.' Her sex is male, consistent with being what we used to call 'a man.' Nonetheless she - yes I do use that term for her because I've grown used to it and do not wish to have my pronouns policed by purists any more than I do by transactivists - she opines on feminism, shamelessly lecturing women on how to do feminism better, and is now lecturing anyone who will listen on the matter of menstrual periods. This is someone who grew up a boy and has never had a period in her life. This is where we find ourselves: MtF transexual women claiming to have experiential knowledge of menstruation simply because they call themselves women and choose to ignore the fact they are biologically male. Their notion of sex (the noun not the verb,) is that it is based on faith - like religion - not on biological material reality. Put simply, Transactivists and their institutions, Stonewall and many others, have conflated sex and gender and sought to impose their beliefs on the entire population. Volumes of analysis has been written on this, so I will not add more. The redoubtable Allison Bailey, from LGB Alliance, covers most of the main points in her statement which was redacted from her crowdjustice page - as if to prove the very point the statement makes - but reproduced with permission by A Woman's Place UK.  A good ten volumes would now be required to cover all the issues adequately, and this is just a blog post, but it should make my own position clear. This piece I wrote for 'Howie's Corner,' for International Women's Day, may clarify some further issues if needed. 

About the pot

The Ballad of Sister Bergdorf is only the beginning. There will have to be more because the madness has spun right out of control but, at the time I made this, I was still finding a way to convert words like these into pots. I chose a pilgrim flask form because it has religious connotations. I also like the simple binary of the shape it has front and a back, or it can do, and it has its ceramic roots in Renaissance Maiolica which featured religious imagery, mythology and, on occasion, political satire.

I also set myself the challenge of using buzz words from academia and art-talk just for hell of it. Look out for the following: 

misgender - as in 'you misgendered me.' This means speaking to or about a transperson using the wrong pronoun - an offence for which women have lost their jobs and their livelihoods and for which some have been investigated by police. 

Othering -  a process of creating difference and distance between groups of people. I like this term and find it one the more useful ideas couched in language that academia has provided in the last thirty years or so. 

Cultural Appropriation - the assertion that a cultural artefact, performance, or custom belongs to a specific culture and is appropriated by another - often with a socio-political or geopolitical dimension that disadvantages the 'owner' or presumed originator of the culture. It is characterised by exponents as theft from a subjugated culture or people by a dominant or more powerful culture or nation. This one is a political and cultural minefield and is fundamentally dependent on Nationalist politics to operate. As such, it is inherently flawed since has become part of the most treasured political tools of people who regard themselves as anti-Imperialist. While anti-Imperialism and Nationalism certainly do go together, Nationalism cannot work with anti-racism and proponents of the ideology of cultural appropriation, for the most part, think of themselves as vehemently anti-racist - and often are, passionately so. Hence the minefield. 

Here is the text in full as it is written on the pot pictured above. 

The Ballad of Sister Bergdorf

Her novitiate completed,

Miss Gender Ring-Munroe

Bade farewell to the Convent sisters

Of St. Simpering-le-Beau

To the land of Eternal Doublethink

Our pious pilgrim was bound

Where Our Lady of Perpetual Othering’s

Shrine, in the woods, by a river, was found.

She hadn’t been long on the road

Only a mile from Doublethink Station

When Lo! She beheld the Sepulchre

Of Cultural Appropriation.

The stone had been rolled away

And there appeared Our Lady of Other,

Miss Gender was struck

By the light – What the Fuck!

I’m not a nun,

I’m a monk!

I’m a Brother!

'I'm Not The Criminal,' 2019, A Pot from 'And The Door Opened'

'Im Not The Criminal,' 2019, 60h x 38w cm  

I'm Not The Criminal

The dominant image of, 'I'm Not The Criminal,' is the portrait of Fiona Broadfoot, a sex trade survivor and campaigner for the abolition of the sex trade. She is one of three women who, with the Centre for Women's Justice, brought the judicial review to have the criminal convictions of exited women removed from the records. Currently, those convictions remain on police records for one hundred years - longer than the life of the woman herself - surely one of the most inhumane and vindictive legal sanctions we have in Britain and wholly unjustifiable. The title of the pot comes from the hashtag adopted for the campaign, #I'mNoCriminal. I am indebted to Fiona for her help with this project, 'And The Door Opened,' which I'm doing in partnership with Women @the Well.  You can read more about her on this website - scroll right until you find her. 

Two Titles

'I'm Not The Criminal,' in its unbroken state, was called, 'The Invisible Man.' On the outside, it depicts a burlesque of hideous characters on the sex trade merry-go-round. These are the men who buy sex, also known as punters/johns/tricks. You can call them what you want - they amount to the same thing: they are the men who pay to abuse exploited and prostituted women and girls. This is not an, 'equal financial transaction,' as some claim, they are buying the submission and, crucially, the silence of the women they abuse. It also depicts the pimps, brothel owners, hotel and escort agency owners, travel tour guides who run 'stag nights,' and so on. It depicts the men who 'groom,' in gangs, the church men, the legal teams who dismiss the testimony of the girls as 'unreliable,' and the police who arrest the exploited girls and women but not the pimps or punters. One of the reasons these pots are broken and rebuilt is to smash the power and dominance of the men and to bring out and emphasise the courage and persistence of the women to speak out, ‘break the silence,’ and campaign for change. This is also the reason for the changing title – it expresses the women’s refusal to submit to the social and legal sanctions imposed on them, and on all prostituted women and girls, and their capacity to wrest the power from the dominant abusive men to effect change in their own lives and in society.

Why ‘Invisible?’

'The Invisible Man,' was so called because the public conversation and focus of every second of media coverage from obscure internet channels to social media to mainstream TV and radio to print journalism, is on the women. It is hardly ever on the men. The men of the sex trade - who are its market, its life blood - the abusers and profiteers, define and embody the sex trade but they escape scrutiny and act with impunity day in day out while the women, the abused and exploited, get the blame and stigma. I am not wholly opposed to stigma - I just think it needs to be relocated - on to the men. I owe this title to Julie Bindel whose excellent book, 'The Pimping of Prostitution,' Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 includes a chapter on this subject, called 'The Invisible Man.' I would also like to alert the reader the work of Raquel Rosario Sanchez who is currently research men who buy sex using the reviews they write of the women they abuse in prostitution.

How and why: the images on the pot – inside and out

The pot is painted on the inside as well the outside. The inside is painted as the pot is being built up. The colours inside are lighter and brighter than the exterior colours so that once the pot has been broken and rebuilt the interior is clearly visible through the gaps. There are images of women on horseback painted inside. It is an allegorical and idealistic image of escape – as though the merry go round horses have come to life to carry the women away to a safer life. The portrait of Fiona Broadfoot was painted on the biggest shard, after the pot was broken. This was to ensure her image was complete. There are images of broken faces of women inside – again I have no wish to deny the damage the sex trade does to women and girls – but I do not want these to be the only images visible.

The merry-go-round motif on this pot is one I have used many times. It is perfect for the dynamic, turning form of a pot and allows a satirical, grotesque characterisation of the men depicted. The Merry-go-round horses get more vicious every time I paint them. These are biting and kicking the men, bucking them off and trampling on them. I want to express the violence of the sex trade - it is necessary to do so. I do not want to hide from it but I have no desire to reproduce images of sexualised violence against women by these men in pictorial form. Another reason to smash the pot is to expresses the violence.

Breaking pots

This pot – in its first state, as ‘The Invisible Man,’ was broken as part of a march against the sex trade in Bradford. (This is an earlier post on this blog.) It was also a memorial procession which ended with a calling out of the all the names of women murdered in prostitution since records have been kept. At the end of a minute's silence, the pot was smashed. The shards were collected and taken back to the studio. There I added the new images, glazed the shards, fired them and then pieced the pot back together, leaving gaps through which the images of the women who have survived the sex trade become visible. The gaps are edged in gold leaf to frame and emphasise the women and to honour their courage and their struggle to survive.

A fired pot can be pieced back together so that it, near enough, retrieves its original form. It is more fragile now and will break again if subject to further pressure but it is remarkably robust and will last well into the future. The method for making the pots is based on the expression, 'I was shattered. Now I'm piecing myself slowly back together.' Or 'I have to completely rebuild my life.' These and similar expressions are commonly used by anyone who has experienced major trauma. The process is a metaphor, in effect, for the trauma and the process of surviving and living into the future. Sex trade survivors often carry a deeply embodied trauma. They are vulnerable to further pressures but, nonetheless, many survive and, eventually, thrive.

Pots - photo credit: Sylvain Deleu.

Smashed pot - photo credit: Studio Twelve, Bradford

Women @the Well, (W@W,) is a women-only service located in Kings Cross dedicated to supporting women whose lives are affected, or at risk of being affected, by prostitution. It also provides support to exit prostitution. 

‘And The Door Opened,’ is a series of events with displays of Claudia’s pots, with talks and demonstrations that illustrate the lives of the women supported by W@W.

The aim is to enhance the public’s understanding of what prostitution is, to name the abuse and exploitation, and to show that, with the right support, girls and women do not need to live and die exploited in the sex trade – there are ways out.

'February, Dark and Cold,' 2019, a pot from 'And The Door Opened,'

'February Dark and Cold,' 2019, 63 h x 28 w cm 

Hand built earthenware pot, slip-painted inside and out with sgraffito drawing through the slip. Bisque fired. Smashed by dropping it into a box on the floor. The box helps to contain the flying shards but it also breaks the fall to some extent so the shattering isn't so dramatic. Some of the larger pieces were dropped again to encourage them to break a bit more. The shards were then collected up and glazed, then fired, and the pieces reassembled with some left out so the viewer can glimpse the images inside. Broken edges gilded in gold leaf.

About the pot
This is the account of a young woman, a fifteen year old girl at the start of her story, whose mother had a job that frequently took her abroad. She seems to have had no other parent or guardian so was left alone. The account is sparse. At some point she has a son, has a drink and drug problem, and also mental health difficulties. When W@W first meet her, she is being sold for sex on the London streets. They help her to 'return to her northern town,' to her family. She leaves again. It appears there is sexual abuse and/or exploitation but it is not spelled out. She returns to London and is street homeless - and immensely vulnerable to (further?) exploitation in prostitution. She describes the cold dark damp of February and the violence on the London streets. At some point she is arrested and is in prison for a while. Once out of prison she contacts W@W again and gets support with the drugs and alcohol problems. They also help her to find a housing solution. This very young woman with a history of abuse going back to her early teenage years now has an interlocking mix of problems which, together, make housing and a future life immensely difficult. The pot has a number of gaps and cracks. This young woman's process of mending her life is only midway, probably. She still has a long way to go. She misses her child. It is unclear where her mother and the rest of her family is. What is clear is that she knows W@W are there to provide support when she needs it.

Photo credit: Sylvain Deleu.

Women @the Well, (W@W,) is a women-only service located in Kings Cross dedicated to supporting women whose lives are affected, or at risk of being affected, by prostitution. It also provides support to exit prostitution. 

‘And The Door Opened,’ is a series of events with displays of Claudia’s pots, with talks and demonstrations that illustrate the lives of the women supported by W@W.

The aim is to enhance the public’s understanding of what prostitution is, to name the abuse and exploitation, and to show that, with the right support, girls and women do not need to live and die exploited in the sex trade – there are ways out.

'Street Exit,' 2019, A Pot from And The Door Opened

 

 

'Street Exit,' 2019, 60 h x 28 w cm 

Hand built earthenware pot, slip-painted inside and out with sgraffito drawing through the slip. The bisque fired pot was then smashed with a hammer - an uncomfortable process - avoiding hitting any of the women, just going for the bits in between. Shards collected up and glazed, then fired, and the pieces reassembled with some left out so the viewer can glimpse the images inside. Broken edges gilded in gold leaf.

About the pot
'Street Exit,' is based on an account given to me by Women @the Well. The images inside the pot show the living places of a homeless woman who met W@W outreach workers in Hackney. She describes 'sofa surfing' with friends who were 'heavy substance users.' She wanted to get away from them so she moved to a tent in a 'green area in Hackney.' She was being exploited in prostitution in both these situations.W@W helped find a place in a hostel and set in motion a support system to help her to reduce and eventually cease her substance use and also to find a way to exit prostitution with the ultimate aim of finding safe, permanent accommodation. The latter is a longer term and probably more difficult goal to achieve given the extreme shortage of safe housing for women in London - particularly those with such complex range of vulnerabilities.

The outside of the pot shows the progress of a woman from street to hostel based on details from the above account and some others along with my own encounters with street homeless women on public transport. Homeless women often avoid hostels because they are heavily male dominated and pose a real threat of sexual violence from the men there. They also avoid the street, if they can, for the same reasons - and also because of the cold, the wet and the sheer exhaustion of never really sleeping -  so public transport, being both public, rather than hidden, and a bit warmer and dryer is potentially a better option. The images above show a woman begging in the underground both at the station and on a train, sleeping - or trying to - in the station and on a bus and, finally, in a hostel sitting at table with a cup of tea contemplating the long and difficult process ahead. Like many of the accounts W@W have asked me to work with, this woman's life is very 'in process.' She has not yet reached a safe conclusion.

'Street Exit,' like 'Women @the Well,' the pot posted earlier, is a broken and mended pot. The images inside are visible through the gaps but only just. You do need to see the pot, 'in person,' to be able to see them. The shattering of the pot is a metaphor the broken feelings the woman expresses and her process of slowly piecing her life back together. It is an imperfect process. She is unlikely to reach a state of complete 'restoration,' but she can continue to live and may be able to thrive, in time. Memories and images of her past will impinge on her present from time to time, however. She may well not live in the past but the past, to some extent, will probably live in her, in her 'emotional muscle memory,' if I may put it that way, and it may be expressed through her emotional responses to things and to situations. I frame the fissures and and gaps in gold leaf to honour her survival and her struggle to proceed through life.

Photo credit: Sylvain Deleu.

Women @the Well, (W@W,) is a women-only service located in Kings Cross dedicated to supporting women whose lives are affected, or at risk of being affected, by prostitution. It also provides support to exit prostitution. 

‘And The Door Opened,’ is a series of events with displays of Claudia’s pots, with talks and demonstrations that illustrate the lives of the women supported by W@W.

The aim is to enhance the public’s understanding of what prostitution is, to name the abuse and exploitation, and to show that, with the right support, girls and women do not need to live and die exploited in the sex trade – there are ways out.

The Goose Mugs 2019

These lovely, elegant bone china mugs were designed by me specially for 'And the Door Opened,' my project with women@thewell, and produced in Stoke on Trent by Repeat Repeat as bespoke products. The edition is limited to 600. 

Why Geese? 

The goose comes from 'Winchester Geese,' the term used to refer to the women who were licenced by the Bishop of Winchester to be sexually exploited legally in the parish around Southwark Cathedral, South London, in the 18th century. The term was probably pejorative but geese are fierce birds - often kept as guard animals. They’re also group animals - they don't operate singly. These two things struck me as good qualities for a project campaigning for social and legal reform, as And The Door Opened does.  May your mug inspire you with fierceness, strength and excellent teamwork.

And The Door Opened, (ATDO,) is a ceramic project by artist Claudia Clare

in partnership  with Women @the Well, (W@W.)

Women @the Well, is a women-only service located in Kings Cross dedicated to supporting women whose lives are affected, or at risk of being affected, by prostitution and helps them to find ways out.

ATDO is a series of events with displays of Claudia’s pots, with talks, demonstrations and workshops that illustrate the lives of the women supported by W@W.

The aim is to enhance the public’s understanding of what prostitution is, to name the abuse and exploitation, and to show that, with the right support, girls and women do not need to live and die exploited in the sex trade – there are ways out.

'Women @the Well,' 2019 a pot from 'And The Door Opened.'

'Women @the Well,' 2019,  50 h x 32 w cms.
Hand built earthenware pot, slip-painted inside and out with sgraffito drawing through the slip. Smashed with a hammer after the first firing - an uncomfortable process - avoiding hitting any of the women, just going for the bits in between. Shards collected up and glazed, then fired and the pieces reassembled with some left out so the viewer can glimpse the images inside. Broken edges gilded in gold leaf.

About the pot
'Women @the Well,' the eponymous pot for the project, is based on an account given to me by the organisation I'm working with, (W@W).
The account had a strong sense of the past being shut away, for now, anyway. The woman describes her young life, raised in the care system, and being on the streets at an early age, being prostituted to get money for drugs for the pimp, (though she, herself was not using them to begin with,) street homeless and, in the end, in and out of prison. She describes herself as 'destitute, dirty and down.' Now she is being supported by W@W where she gets clean clothes, a hot meal and has a 'named worker.' That connection with a support worker whose name she knows and who knows her name seemed absolutely vital in this account. Here she was treated as fully human, perhaps for the first time in her young adult life. She was learning some basic skills, she had help to find housing - appropriated for her needs. In all the accounts I have read there is a powerful sense of separation  - an almost impregnable wall - between the 'world of the prostituted and the rest of the world.' This woman seems to be starting to breach that wall, starting to feel part of the world. Knowing another woman's name - a professional woman, not someone in the prostituted world - and her own name being known to her 'named worker,' was central to that process. She is also contacting family - there is one, somewhere.

The images you see on the pot are of her with her worker at W@W. They're all fictional images. I had to imagine her there and imagine what she might look like. Confidentiality is key to success so this is why I'm working with prepared accounts. I have shut her past away inside the pot but it appears in the cracks from time to time. The other common thread in all the accounts is trauma. These are women grossly abused and exploited, often from an early age, and exposed to persistent violence and brutality. Recovery from trauma is long process and rarely complete. Sex trade survivors remain vulnerable to further pressure. The broken pot, mended, but not fully, is a metaphor for surviving sexual violence and exploitation. It is not easy to do justice to these accounts and I did not want to avoid the shattering experiences these women had endured but nor did I want to reproduce the violence in pictures. Breaking and rebuilding the pot was the best approach. It represents the slow recovery and the lasting vulnerability while also honouring the courage of the women to survive and find different lives.

Photo credit: Sylvain Deleu.

Women @the Well, (W@W,) is a women-only service located in Kings Cross dedicated to supporting women whose lives are affected, or at risk of being affected, by prostitution. It also provides support to exit prostitution. 

‘And The Door Opened,’ is a series of events with displays of Claudia’s pots, with talks and demonstrations that illustrate the lives of the women supported by W@W.

The aim is to enhance the public’s understanding of what prostitution is, to name the abuse and exploitation, and to show that, with the right support, girls and women do not need to live and die exploited in the sex trade – there are ways out.