Krug | Cruche | Jarra | Jug (1 litre)

Meanwhile, back in the studio…

I will be delivering new work today, for this:

The work is a play on the volume of a jug, made at Prinknash Abbey, Gloucestershire. My friend, Kevin de Choisy, thinks it a very poor example of the form, but I quite like it. Anyway, it’s what’s inside that counts…

 

Krug | Cruche | Jarra | Jug (1 litre)

But if the holding is done by the jug’s void, then the potter who forms sides and bottom on his wheel does not, strictly speaking, make the jug. He only shapes the clay. No — he shapes the void… From start to finish the potter takes hold of the impalpable void and brings it forth as the container in the shape of a containing vessel. The jug’s void determines all the handling in the process of making the vessel. The vessel’s thingness does not lie at all in the material of which it consists, but in the void that holds.

And yet, is the jug really empty?

Martin Heidegger The Thing (1971)

When, in the appearance of the handle, one of its two functions is completely neglected in favour of the other, the impression made strikes a discordant note. This often occurs, for example, when the handles form merely a kind of relief ornament, being fully attached to the body of the vase, leaving no space between vase and handle. Here, the form rules out the purpose of the handle (that with it the vase may be grasped and handled), evoking a painful feeling of ineptness and confinement, similar to that produced by a man who has his arms bound to his body.

Georg Simmel The Handle (1911)

Wilson has developed a way of working that incorporates research, making, drawing, documenting, writing and existing objects – often included through ‘guided chance’. The exhibited works are selected by-products of an ongoing ‘game of Jug’, instigated by Heidegger’s essay and the subsequent ebay purchase of a jug made at Prinknash Abbey, the home of concrete poet, Dom Sylvester Houédard (‘nada nada’ from ceolfrith 15). Working out the limits of the game is a form of speculation on the reality of a jug.