Output details

Out-of-Use

Following an invitation by the Bergen Art & Design Academy in Norway to submit a project proposal for the international ‘Topographies of the Obsolete’ site specific research project (project leaders: Prof. Anne Helen Mydland and Dr. Neil Brownsword, funded by the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme) at the Spode factory, Fabian exhibited his resulting installation during the ‘Vociferous Void Exhibition’ as part of British Ceramics Biennale in Stoke-on-Trent (2013). The aims and objectives of the workshop with participating Universities from Germany, Norway, Denmark and UK were to uncover a variety of methods and strategies to explore the complexity of the site from different perspectives and practices. After initial material experimentation during two site specific workshops at the original Spode factory (March and August 2013), Fabian, as the principal participating designer/silversmith focused on using obsolete Spode moulds as his ‘site’ to explore transitions of function whilst the display strategy played with the context and associations of the ‘glass cabinet’ and the ‘table top’: From in-use to out-of-use? The installation also aimed to raise questions about commonly used museum display strategies, i.e. the use of display cabinets for the presentation of artefacts behind glass. The artefact played with both the inside and outside of the cabinet, the use of materials (objects were made from translucent paraffin wax rather than the original porcelain) to comment on the longevity of ‘designed form’ in a changing socio-economic context. The exhibition (27th September – 10th November 2013) has also generated a publication (critical texts by Dixon, Hauge and Shales together with artist’s project presentations) in conjunction with a two-day collaborative, international participant symposium at Stoke-on-Trent to stimulate new debates in post-industrial narratives of art and design.