And Evening With Women @the Well and Claudia Clare

An Evening with Women@the Well and Claudia Clare. 

Weds Sept 15th, 2021, 6 - 8pm, doors close 9pm. 

6.30 Claudia Clare - artist working with Women @the Well

6.45 Harriet Wistrich - Founder of the Centre for Women's Justice 

6.55 Lynda Dearlove  - CEO Women @the Well 

7.10 A minute's silence ended with the smashing of the pot, 'Brave Face.' 

The evening includes a display of the pots from our joint project, 'And The Door Opened.'  

I will be talking about the pots and the project and the director of W@W will discuss the work they have been doing over the past 18 months and how Covid has affected the women they support. 

About the Project:

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. They also offer support to women wishing to exit the sex trade and help them to identify and overcome the barriers that maybe obstructing that process. 

‘And The Door Opened,’ is a collection of pots, made in partnership with W@W, that illustrate the lives of the women they work with, based on accounts provided by the women themselves. Some of the pots represent the accounts of women survivors who have already exited and others are still involved in prostitution. 

The aim is to enhance the public's understanding of what prostitution is 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.

And The Door Opened: the shop window display - November 2nd 2019-January 6th 2020

The photos below all show the shop window display that was set up on November 2nd and changed bit by bit throughout the display period as I was able to add complete pots. The titles were added last with quotes from some of the people who attended the launch and demonstration. Professional photos of the individual pots will be added with more about each one, including some of the accounts on which the pot is based.

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, and helps them to find ways out.

‘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.

And The Door Opened: Drop in Demonstration and Workshop, November 30th and December 7th 2019

The drop in on November 30th brought people in from the shopping mall and library to see me demonstrating how to rebuild a shattered pot. Some people came, having attended the launch, others saw posters, others followed social media posts but most just came in from the mall.

The workshop, where I invited people to bring a broken pot from home and show them how to mend it was all people returning from one of the earlier events. There are no images of the mending workshop, mainly because everyone was too busy concentrating on their work and because I forgot to take any but also because there was a kind of intimacy about the day. People brought their own things with their own stories. I can share one of these though. A woman brought a broken ceramic clown - just the button was broken, a tiny part of it but it was in numerous pieces. She was Nigerian and her father had been a leading trade union activist there. In the 1960s he went to Russia as part of a TU delegation and was given the clown as the TU equivalent of a diplomatic gift. She mended the button with utmost care. At the end she said, 'I'm going to leave out this last piece as a memorial and to honour all the shattered lives.'

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, and helps them to find ways out.

‘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.