Output details

Transient 3: Material and Metaphor. (Permanently sited artwork/installation, Reduction fired Chinese indigenous brick, rusted steel tables.)

Brief Description

Heeney was selected as one of 12 National UK artists to create work for the permanent collection of the British Pavilion of the new International Ceramic Museum, Flicam, Fuping, Shaanxi Province, China. The project was supported by the Arts Council of England, Arts Wales International, Flicam Pottery Art Village, Fuping, China, and University of Wolverhampton. Heeney investigated the development of light, shadow and reflectivity within brick sculpture metaphorically to represent the economic impact on the social and cultural life of China’s working class. Heeney supports indigenous industries through her work. In 2009 she worked with the University of Costa Rica to save the last remaining brick company in Costa Rica from extinction.

Research Rationale

Heeney’s research has investigated the cultural/industrial significance of brick as a sculptural medium. She has explored shadow, light and reflectivity for the purpose of metaphorical representation in site specific brick sculpture. For ‘Transient 3’, Heeney has experimented with the abstraction of traditional figurative sculpture to express the notion of memory, dispersal and desperation: a head carved in green brick is disassembled for firing, and – when reassembled – is re-configured as an abstract city, metaphorically describing the economic dispersal of peoples across the cities of China.

Strategies Undertaken

Heeney advances the field of brick sculpture through her experiments in hand-carving extruded brick and complex cutting boxes. In ‘Transient 3’, this process is used to echo industrial processes as a visual language and metaphor for memory, dispersal and despair. This development was supported through interviews with factory workers, revealing the economic plight of their families.