2023-2024 A TAVOLA CON ROCHESTER SQUARE
Museo della Ceramica Savona
Six international artists have gone to Western Liguria, historically an important hub of international gatherings, to offer the local community a series of workshops and laboratories focused on ceramics and artistic experimentation. From Aug. 28th to Sept. 7th, 2023, the six artists and ceramicists, Francesca Anfossi, Milan Tarascas, Ewelina Bartkowska, Lyson Marchessault, Paulina Michnowska and Lex Franchi have been hosted by the Museum of Ceramics in Savona. This has been possible thanks to the synergy created with Anfossi, born and raised in Liguria and co-founder in 2015 of the Rochester Square project: a dynamic studio dedicated to socially engaged projects, set on an original and successful ecological vision of ceramic art.
The connection with the territory and its attributes was one of the main aspects of the artistic residency in Liguria. The workshops organized together with the Museum of Ceramics in Savona led artists and participants into the woods of the western hinterland to study and quarry the natural red clays, which were then used experimentally in the laboratory, on the sandy shores of the mouth of the Sansobbia creek, to model plaster casts directly on the sand of the beach, in the manufactures of local artisans and on the lathes of the Municipal School of Ceramics in Albisola.
Inheriting the social and aggregative interpretation of the pottery making carried on in the Rochester Square kiln, the project that took place in Savona involved on some occasions the Caritas of Savona. Some workshops were also aimed at children and teens as part of summer art camps curated by the Museum’s Educational Department, demonstrating the versatility of the ceramic techniques, at once sophisticated and humble, artifact and natural, extraordinary and ordinary, like eating and being together. Indeed, according to the founders, associates and participants of Rochester Square, food is the key element in transforming places and situations into an engine for the community social life.
Installation shoot at Museo della Ceramica Savona
Ceramic Bread , installation shoot
Table and Stools, installation shoot
2021 A CORNISH BANQUET
Whitegold, St Austell
is supported by the Whitegold Project in St Austell, is in collaboration with Cornwall Neighbourhoods for Change and will culminate in a community feast as part of the Whitegold Festival in 2021
Original poster used to call out
Terracotta slip print
In June 2021 i runned a series of online workshop during which the participants produced their own ceramic plate, based on the design of the clay print they previously received. Finally, the legacy of our collaboration will be celebrated on the occasion of the festival in 2021, in the form of a convivial outdoor picnic.
This project has started with a series of interactions with the local community in St Austell of CN4C. The participants were invited to send me any pictures of their favourite food, recipes or ingredients.
I used the images to make a collage like print in clay on paper, which they were sent back to them in the format of clay prints to be inspired by the next step.
Thank you to everyone who has sent photos so far! Click on the image above to see them all…
Clay slip prints , produced from images of the participants’s favourite food.
A unique picnic blankets based on my ongoing conversation and exchange of images was made to celebrate conviviality during The Whitegold Festival in June. The blanket will be donated to Cornwall Neighbourhoods for Change for future events. As such, everything produced will remain in St Austell and its surroundings and form part of a broader legacy initiated by Whitegold.
Picnic blanket, designed with the same images of the food represented on the final plates