Portrait – Jo Pearl Sculpture

Modern Slavery : Once you know, you can’t un-know

February 18, 2022February 18, 2022by JoPearl3 Comments

Over the last 6 months I have been working away on a commission for Undisclosed, a group show curated by Nicola Hockley and Caroline Evans, seeking to expose Modern Slavery as a 21st Century crime. The show runs from 2 March – 18th April at The Hostry exhibition space in Norwich Cathedral, with the Private View on 10th March 6-8pm. Everyone is invited! The plinths are being made, the catalogue is being printed – but before I share photos of the completed work, I thought I would post about the research and making process I have been through.

The Problem of Modern Slavery

I confess I did not know much about the subject before being invited to exhibit. It turns out despite slavery having been abolished in 1833 – it is still alive and kicking here in the UK, and frighteningly prevalent in the production of cheap food and agricultural products. Although it takes many forms from children in county lines drug running, to trafficked sex workers, to valet car washes, the bit that most shocked me was the prevalence of debt bondage in the supply chain of the food we buy weekly from our favourite supermarkets. The pressure to supply cheap cheap goods, means companies look the other way when agencies send them inexpensive and submissive workers, often non-english speaking, who turn up corralled into vans, often down at heal. These are some of the tell tell signs that employers need to look out for if they don’t want their products tainted by the scourge of slave labour. Victims of modern slavery are invariably in fear of their lives from those who lured them to this country with the promise of good work, and then demand that they pay back the cost of flights, accommodation, use of tools – with vastly inflated rates, and despicably low rates of pay. Victims of debt bondage slip ever deeper into debt, while attempts to flee or argue back are met with violence – or threats of violence to family back home. It is a sorry tale. And a blight on the way we consume. But once you know you can’t un-know.

Slavery blooming in UK agriculture

We have been conned by consumerism and seduced by the lured of the bargain. Indeed being a bargain hunter is pretty much considered a virtue. I fell for it. For more than 10 years I have been buying a couple of bunches of cheap daffodils in my weekly Sainsbury’s shop each spring. A two quid treat for me and my family to brighten the kitchen table. Where’s the harm in that? Well it turns out Cornish Daffs are/have been produced with slave labour. It’s no wonder when you consider they are picked by hand, and yet 10 blooms cost just £1. That one pound has to cover the bulbs, planting, tending, hand picking, processing, packaging, delivery to the distribution centre and then on to the supermarkets AND making a profit for shareholders. For me it became clear – if the goods are seductively cheap, and it involves manual labour, someone is getting screwed over.

This terracotta Janus Head, ‘Every Little Helps‘ references Tesco’s strap line. Every little bit of exploitation and cutting of corners, as well as mechanisation helps to keep the price down – but at what cost? This piece is my attempt to take responsibility for my role in the cheap daffodil trade. On one side I have sculpted a self portrait of me as the Bargain Hunter – with a crazed expression of someone who has just spotted an irresistible deal. On the other, is a portrait of an actual survivor of Modern Slavery who kindly agreed to sit for me. I travelled to the Welsh borders to meet up with her, hear about her experiences and take photographic visual references to be able to sculpt the portrait. I wanted to capture a sense of the desolation and dehumanising numbness that she described to me when she was trapped in forced labour. Although my muse was not herself involved in the daffodil production, it was confirming to hear she was glad I was wanting to highlight this story. The contrast between the charm and beauty of daffodils, and the processes at play to get them to market will hopefully shock viewers. The piece will be displayed in Norwich with fresh daffodils coming out of the aperture in the top of the head.

A Feast of Modern Slavery – it is everywhere

My research also revealed that that modern slavery is now so endemic in UK food production, from planting and harvesting, to packing and processing, that an expert who works in the industry told me if I wanted to sculpt the food that is produced using modern slavery, I could choose anything I liked to represent – it is everywhere! So I made a slavery salad – an homage to 16th Century master-ceramicist Bernard Palissy, press moulding shrimp and cockle shells (remember the trafficked Morecambe Bay Cockle pickers who drowned), shrimp, lettuce, asparagus, and eggs to create an abundant platter of glossy but tainted food.

Bernard Palissy Platter I saw at the Wallace Collection in 2020

Making this work took weeks of clay and glaze testing, rediscovering mould making, and a few kiln disasters

You Can’t Walk Away

The third sculpture that I have made for the Undisclosed is called – ‘You Can’t Walk Away‘ – a quote from Blood and Earth by Kevin Bales. This statement is the simplest definition of modern slavery. If you can’t walk away from your job for fear of violence, arrest, and crippling debt then you are experiencing slave labour. This terracotta shackled foot, that is straining to get away and yet fixed in place also references the terrible shackles of the transatlantic slave trade. I chose to sculpt in terracotta clay as its high iron content – just like blood, gives the clay its distinctive red colour.

Ancient Clay Infographics

Finally, I made a fourth piece called 77 Percent that responds to a 2020 survey by The Ethical Trading Initiative with the Hult Business school which revealed that 77% of UK corporations believe that they have modern slavery somewhere in their supply chains. I was shocked – that’s over three quarters of everything we buy has been produced using unacceptable labour practices at some point in their supply chain. It takes the shine off consumerism no?

77 Percent is inspired by cuneiform clay tablets, humanity’s oldest known form of writing. Babylonian and Sumerians often used clay tablets for accounting purposes – to record bushels of wheat harvested, or numbers of slaves owned. It felt appropriate that this story of slavery – sadly a tale as old as time – should be told using a clay tablet.

To communicate the statistic I divided a leather hard clay slab into a 10×10 grid, and then inscribed the cuneiform word for female slave into 77 of the 100 squares.

Why female slave? I was fascinated to learn that cuneiform means wedge script – due to the wedge shaped stylus used to score the clay. But this wedge shape also shares an etymological root with the Latin Cuneus – for triangular wedge and the arguably vulva – that is the root for the modern words: c*nt and c*nilingus

I used a chop stick to inscribe the clay

Moving Darwin

July 22, 2021August 20, 2021by JoPearl1 Comment

My first solo show – Moving Darwin, is finally opening to the public Monday 26th July – 12th Sept at the Home of Charles Darwin.

It has been quite an journey. From the germ of an idea as a 3rd year student at Central Saint Martins making work for a hypothetical exhibition at Down House, the intensity of making a stop-frame clay animation and series of ceramic works in my final term, the delight when the museum’s curators embraced the idea and invited me to exhibit in 2020, its subsequent cancelation due to COVID, to English Heritage re-kindling the project this spring which presented a new opportunity. It is now installed and ready for the doors to open on Monday.

Excitingly, the work is bang up to date. I have sculpted new pieces to respond to the current pandemic which highlights just how relevant Charles Darwin’s theories about the expression of emotions still are today. Hands up if you are struggling to understand the emotions or ‘read the room’ when staring at zoom in gallery view? Or looking at a face half-obscured by a PPE mask and wondering if that person is sad or angry? Contemporary life is challenging what Darwin knew to be true – that the facial expression of emotions are normally universally understood as they are a core constituent of how we have evolved as a species. They are a pre-linguistic language, one of the reasons we are such a successful species on this planet because we can communicate quickly, silently, and with great sophistication. What happens if we can’t understand each other’s emotions in these current circumstances?

Emotional Field – Wedgwood-inspired emotional portraits

When I first got the invitation to exhibit at Down House, I decided I wanted to develop the work further and make a new version of Emotional Field focusing on a woman. On reflection my degree show installation was completely male dominated. The current Emma Darwin, great great granddaughter to Charles and Emma, and an expert on her family’s history, seemed the obvious choice to ask to sit for me for this update. Emma came to my house in autumn 2019, and I photographed her, taking ‘mug shots’ of her front, left and right views expressing and holding the six emotions that her forebear defined as universally understood whether you life in Pinner or Papua New Guinea: Happiness sadness, fear, surprise, anger and disgust. Since then I have sculpted numerous versions, but it was not until this spring and the prospect of the show was revived that I decided to sculpt these six emotions again, this time in Wedgwood inspired colours, with the added frisson of one Wedgwood Blue head wearing a porcelain white face mask. The Jasperware colours also allowed me to make a strong visual link between the Darwin and Wedgwood family dynasties.

Abstract Fear – an interpretation of what visceral fear feels like in the body.

Another piece I have remade for ‘Moving Darwin’ is Abstract Fear – I wanted to include a gestural piece that showed what the emotions feel like in our bodies. But the only placement possible, on a marble mantle piece against a cream wall, led me to rework the original piece in delicious black clay to add to its visceral sense of menace.

Needless to say, my stop-frame clay animation is also on display at Down House. I worked with the wonderful set designer Colin Peters to make this demountable viewing cabin, to create an immersive experience while watching the film, complete with surround sound, and a periscopic side view of the original raw clay head of William Pryor that was used during the making of WhyTheFace?

I will be on site at Down House on the opening day Monday 26th July – running a series of drop in clay emoji workshops. Come along if you can. If not, Down House makes a wonderful summer’s day out of London. You can get there using just an Oyster card, if you don’t have car – via trains to Orpington or Bromley South, and then a bus to Downe Village. Apart from seeing my work, it is fascinating to visit Darwin’s study where he penned The Origin of Species and The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, but also roam in his walled garden and green house where he studied plants, insect and animal varieties up close during his scientific research.

And finally if you would like to hear a really generous interview with me by BBC Radio Kent’s wonderful Dominic King the take a listen by clicking on the image below and scrolling to 1hr 12mins in, where I gabble on excitedly for 10 minutes.

Click on image to listen to interview – scrolling to 1hr 12mins in for start of the conversation

WhyTheFace? at The Central St Martins Degree Show 19-23rd June

June 15, 2019July 21, 2019by JoPearl3 Comments

WhyTheFace? my graduating project is finished and ready to be seen. After 10 weeks of work, today is the final day of installing the Central St Martins Degree Show. The official Private View takes place on Tuesday 18th June, and it is open to the general public Wednesday – Saturday 19-21 June from 12-8pm and on Sunday 22 June 12-6pm. Please do pop into the show to see it. Or you can click on the Vimeo link below to see an excerpt from the stop frame clay animation, with a sequence expressing fear.

What’s it all about?

WhyTheFace? is a study of what emotions look like and feel like. A personal taxonomy inspired by Charles Darwin’s ground-breaking publication The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals in which he defined six emotions as fundamental to human evolution and universally understood, whether you live in Pinner or Papual New Guinea: Happiness, Sadness, Surprise, Fear, Anger and Disgust.

This exploration is both figurative and abstract.

An animated stop-motion portrait of William Pryor, Darwin’s Great Great Grandson, is interspersed with abstracted versions of the same emotions. Some of these gestural interpretations have been fired and are placed in the installation.

The portrait of Pryor, whose expression was changed over 200 times during the shooting of the film is left as raw clay, kept damp under a glass dome in suspended animation ready to be brought back to life. Condensation on the inside of the glass begs the question: Is he still breathing?

A cluster of fired specimens on the shelf capture other examples of the six emotions.

The work is a response to emerging scientific evidence that young toddlers are arriving in nursery with a delayed understanding of the facial expressions of emotions. This is linked to too much time spent on flat screen devices rather than in-the-flesh interactions with their care-givers.

The installation’s specimen shelf includes a ceramic ‘brain’ representing Digital Dementia, where the right side of the brain associated with mood control and empathy is underdeveloped, in comparison with the left.

Viewers are invited to enter my world. Both as a maker-space where I have created this work, but also as conceptual field.

The installation is designed to evoke a whispered message from Charles Darwin on the importance of empathy and understanding emotions. In today’s fast-paced, digitally obsessed world, the viewer is given permission to slow down and stare at the flesh of emotions. In this oneiric space they might catch a glimpse of themselves mirroring the expressions on display, emotional contagion – a shared experience of empathy.

People’s Votive

September 3, 2018September 4, 2018by JoPearlLeave a comment

The last two years have been difficult. I have been hard hit by the result of the Brexit Referendum and Trump’s election to the White House. Trying to find ways to channel my political frustrations and concerns into the clay.

This week I am again taking part in an Associated Clay Workers Union (ACWU) group exhibition at Southwark Cathedral in the Lancelot Link, this time on the theme of Votive. The act of offering votives into water is used in many cultures and throughout history from early Neolithic times. Hopeful ritual acts to engender change in the future, votives are often given in dedication or as a consequence of a vow. They are a ritual performance undertaken in uncertain times and in thanks for subsequent relief.

Responding to this theme, it seemed like an ideal opportunity create a piece to express my prayers for a People’s Vote on the final Brexit Deal, including an option to stay within the EU. Inspired by a Roman chalice I saw a few years ago in the Louvre, and thinking about Janus, the Roman god of transitions who is represented on the gates of Rome with two heads facing in opposite directions, I chose to make a double portrait of Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn. On one level two sides of the same Brexit coin.

I reworked the chalice archetype by creating a ballot box out of their heads rather than a sacrificial vessel. Both Corbyn and May appear to me to be inextricably linked in the current political trajectory towards what appears will be a No Deal Brexit. From my perspective both politicians have been two-faced Remainers. Both campaigned for Remain, but have been been responsible for a shocking shift towards a hard Brexit. Corbyn’s lack of leadership and opposition on Brexit has been deafening. To me he appears to be aiding and abetting the UK’s exit from the EU, a betrayal to his Islington Constituents, of which I am one, and Londoners who voted over-welmingly for Remain and to young people, stalwart Remainers who he proports to represent.

Visual Reference for the Portraits

Reference Images for the Portraits

Visual Reference for the Portraits

I have deliberately chosen to not fire Votive for a Vote on the Final Brexit Deal. The intension is to take the work to its natural conclusion and ‘gift’ it to the Thames at the end of the show, as a ritual offering, in the hope that my prayers come true.

The exhibition is being staged within the annual Totally Thames Festival programme, and after the show has come down on Sunday 30th September, at Midday – which is low tide, my fellow ACWU makers and I will be offering the unfired work to the Thames. It will take place on the Thames foreshore, Queen’s Walk, Bankside, in front of The Globe Theatre. The unfired clay sculptures will be placed on the shingles, and allowed to be sacrificially washed away and returned to mud by the capital’s tidal waters.

Come down if you can, to both the exhibition and the Gifting, and spread the word about the #Peoplesvote. It’s not a done deal. We demand the right to a vote on the final Brexit Deal, including an option to remain in the EU if we do not like the terms of the deal, or no deal. If you want to take action now, click here to sign the People’s Vote petition.

Votive Exhibition at Southwark Cathedral

Emotions in Paper Clay

September 8, 2017June 7, 2018by JoPearl2 Comments

So I am quite excited about how my exploration into portraiture is developing. My latest project is a single self portrait of me expressing a series of emotions, the kind of emotions you might have during a single day. I photographed the head as it progressed through these facial expressions and then animated it into a film. Click on the link above to watch it. It is an attempt to show fleeting human emotions in clay using analogue and digital sources and technologies.

At its core, the work is based on the idea that life is made up of fleeting emotions and micro moments.

How it came about:

At Easter I discovered the work of 18^th Century Austrian sculptor, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt. In a state of mental breakdown, Messerschmidt sculpted 64, what have become known, as ‘Character Heads’. I was blown away by them and it rather took the wind out of my sails that a portrait sculptor had been exploring this so well two and a half centuries ago. What could I add?

Incapable Bassoonist

The Yawn, 1770-83

Down the ages, most portraiture has been a kind of PR exercise, often representing powerful people in idealised ways, and with neutral facial expressions. Although this later point is probably based on practical considerations as sitters find it very tiring to hold poses with extreme facial expressions. But how might Messerschmidt portray emotions if he were alive today? And how can clay portraiture show the messy business of being human now?

My ideas board got me to thinking about how feelings are expressed in time. In this fast paced digital world we live in I am interested in ways to slow down the viewer’s gaze, and reconnect them with the nitty gritty of human experience: our emotions and how they ebb and flow. Hence I sculpted my emotional portrait through time, and animated it.

My intention was also to try to reboot the genre and find a way to give the portrait a contemporary twist by bouncing between the digital and analogue realms.

The work that I had done last term with Jonathan Keep using the data from the Royal Academy 3D Scan of my head, led me to understand that there are real benefits from creating hybrid digital and analogue outputs (See my previous post)

I decided to use the 3D scan of my head as the starting point for the sculpture, then work from photographs of me showing various feelings as the basis of the emotional iterations. At certain points I also wanted to include some strange Matrix-like perspectives that the digital world now affords us.

At the start of the project, I planned to decorate the head using low-fired glazes, as I have become committed to working as ecologically as possible in my sculpting work. But as the project progressed, it became clear that really the final head did not need to be fired at all. In fact firing would have run counter to the philosophy of the piece. It is the plasticity of the paper clay that that has allowed me to work and iterate the piece. Turning it into a permanently solid sculpture would not have made sense.

The film was produced using 6 still images morphed on an iPhone app, and then set to a soundscape, that I composed in Garage Band.

So my next steps:

I am thinking about allowing the head to dry out and crumble. Perhaps outside so that the weather can gradually erode it away. Perhaps in a vat of water, so that it can slowly dissolve. Or left to gently decay under this bell jar ….

Jo Pearl Emotions In Time