QUIETUS
mima
Commissioned by mima, Quietus: The vessel, death and the human body explored the containment of the human body after death. Featuring cinerary jars and life size sarcophagi, it was the culmination of ten years’ work. Quietus toured across the UK (National Museum of Wales Cardiff, Winchester Cathedral and Somerset House, London) and assumed very different forms in the various venues. Columbarium, a ten-metre tower of cinerary jars, greeted the visitor at mima’s white cube gallery. Almost an abstraction of colour and shape, it heralded Reliquary for a Common Man which was the closing work in the exhibition: a single cinerary jar made with, and housing, the ashes of a close family member.
Columbarium
_
10 metre-high Columbarium features 130 cinerary jars thrown in a variety of clays including porcelain, basalt and stoneware.
“Columbarium (..a group resting place for human remains contained in vessels..) was ten meters high at mima, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, and contained 130 cinerary urns thrown in a variety of clays: porcelain, Wedgwood’s basalt, and stoneware .. the installation soars powerfully to the ceiling—a momentum of death ascending into heaven or the universe.. and .. each lidded pot is an independent artwork in itself.. imbued with its own creational sensitivity, distinct and poetic but never assertive, in a manner appropriate to its solemn role …... the closer one gets to the Columbarium the better it gets and the more the fundamental power of the individual pots takes over.”
Inhumation
_
This group of work contains the most technically challenging forms. Evoking the containment of the body in death with an unsparing immediacy, sarcophagi for both adults and children were made at a series of brick factories and fired in industrial kilns. Some took over six months to complete.
Corpus
_
This gallery featured monumental burial jars, hand thrown over many weeks using Etrurial Marl and Carboniferous Shale.
Memorium
_
A single cinerary jar on a lead plinth stands at the centre of this room, framed by audio-visual material relating to the life of one individual, Lesley James Cox. The bone china jar contains and is made from his ashes.
Audio interview about Les Cox’s political education into Socialism in the 1940’s. Questions by a fellow party member Gwynn Thomas (Socialist Party of Great Britain) Duration: 10’ 28"