Remembrance

The installation, 'Remembrance', was prompted by the experience of my Mother’s dementia and meeting other sufferers and relatives. There are stories to be told from the individual pieces and further stories came from the viewers. This specific manifestation of the installation was sited within Wakefield Cathedral. The works were placed around the Cathedral, responding to and creating a conversation with its surroundings. Each of the individual pieces holds 13 hand-cast porcelain candles, some with text on them. Each also includes a ceramic, pudding basin bearing various discolourations. These basins are old and have their own history. Most had ‘crazed’ glazes which would have allowed anything kept in them to leach into the ceramic body. When I re-fired the basins (at about 800C, to fuse the images inside them) things such as bone or blood (from dripping or stock) or acids from fruits (puddings etc) affected the colour of the pieces, giving rise to the marks on the outsides of the basins. The wood of the supports also has history, each bearing the remains of paint or linoleum etc.. As well as the ‘histories’ in the pieces, the basin donors also told me the memories which their basin held for them.