Northern Willow

Tait, Angela; Clegg, Ian

Abstract

Northern Willow at the Whitaker
A collection of ceramics exploring local identity and value systems in the North West, set against an eclectic and vibrant group of relevant artefacts from the archives of the Whitaker Museum and Gallery.

This body of work from long time collaborators Angela Tait and Ian Clegg comes from a number of positions but has its roots in this story:
2016; During one of their rambling conversations, which often drift into little pockets of memory, Ian relates a story. The tale, not even his own but a retelling of his Mother’s, relates to an image of a welsh dresser filled with someone’s precious blue and white transferware crockery. The furniture was left outside in the streets of Merseyside following a bombing raid during the war. Neither Angela or Ian call fully recall quite how the idea developed, but this snippet of remembering becomes Northern Willow. An ongoing project reinterpreting the universally known willow pattern into a contemporary notion of time and place with a political undercurrent.
Northern Willow is a reimagining. A place for reinterpretation of something which belongs to us all; a way to think through local identity with a wide ecological lens. The apple trees and factories sit alongside the Manchester ship canal and Jodrell bank in playful distorted symmetry with the weeping willows and pagodas of its ubiquitous ancestor.
The support for this imagery, not mass-produced earthenware plates and platters, but hand made, fine porcelain casts of disposable crockery. Paper plates, cardboard cups and tinfoil trays. Each seemingly similar but with unique anomalies curtesy of the making process. This misuse of materials giving more than a knowing nod to the current discourses surrounding recycling and the ongoing, sometimes heart-breaking, daily images of the earth’s increasing burdens.

Questioning Value and function
The collection here at the Whitaker is varied in terms of subject and quality, often including generous gifts from local benefactors. Things they have considered precious through their own personal systems of value.
But where does this value lie? Chipped ceramics of dubious quality alongside poorly printed transferware teapots and commemorative ware from jubilees and Sunday schools. These pieces often don’t register on the financial scale so therefore the value must be elsewhere.
These pieces allow visitors to access their own heritage through objects. The vessels are as much carriers of meaning as holders for life sustaining food or liquid, possibly more so. Cultural understanding sits alongside sentimental or emotional attachment to many of these pieces.

Place
The willow pattern Chinese aesthetic is enduring. The original pieces came via the trade routes by land and sea from the orient, satisfying the Victorian appetite for the exotic, becoming a much sought after commodity. The distinctive pattern was subsequently copied by the British ceramic manufacturers. Today, the majority of the willow pattern found in the West was produced in Europe, a representation so ubiquitous as to misshape our understanding of place.
The Whitaker Museum and Gallery is firmly rooted in its own surroundings. This is reflected in both its community and its collection. Many of the pieces chosen for this exhibition have parochial connections with the area. Northern Willow sits alongside these works as a comrade. The new work supports the collection’s sense of place whilst borrowing stylistic concerns from the displaced forefather.

• Exhibition Performance Type: Exhibition
• Start Date: Nov 1, 2019
• End Date: Mar 18, 2020
• Deposit Date: May 30, 2023
• Keywords: ceramics, willowpattern ceramicsresearch sculpture museumcollections