Stephen Dixon

Senior Research Fellow, MIRIAD, Manchester Metropolitan University

Art, Politics and Narrative

As Senior Research Fellow, MIRIAD, at ManchesterMetropolitanUniversity, I am engaged in practice-based research into the role and nature of political narrative in the contemporary crafts.

I am interested in the inter-relationship between research and practice, and would welcome the opportunity to debate this in an international and inter-disciplinary context.

I recently presented a paper ‘Beauty and the Beast’ at the IASPIS symposium ‘Aspects of Beauty’ in Stockholm.

I propose, for ‘Sensuous Knowledge 2’ to make a presentation based on a number of issues explored in my most recent works; ‘21 Countries’ (exhibited at the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, Clay gallery Los Angeles, and SOFA New York) and ‘Savage Indignation’ (exhibited at Contemporary Applied Arts, London).

The presentation will address the following questions:-

• Context – the legacy and tradition of ‘political’ ceramics.
• The nature of political narrative in contemporary crafts practice.
• Whose narrative is it anyway? – truth, knowledge, alternative realities.
• Power and propaganda in an age of media spin.
• Pop culture – visual metaphors and new allegories.

I would make my presentation as a cd-rom power-point, and would require a pc lap-top and digital projector.

The following text, an extract from a forthcoming article for ‘Kunsthandverk’ magazine (Ed. Jorunn Veiteberg) explains my work and research interests more fully.

The Sleep of Reason

Since I began my professional practice in 1986, I have been engaged in the development of a contemporary political narrative for ceramics.

Initially, my work exploited the visual language of the satirical cartoon, in a densely modelled and deliberately accessible figurative format. These pieces, usually took the form of lidded ‘boxes’, and were inspired by the rich traditions of figurative ceramics and ‘popular’ commemorative wares.

Since 1998, as Research Fellow in Contemporary Crafts at Manchester Metropolitan University, my practice-led research into political content has focussed on the printed image, and on the development of a more ‘allegorical’ narrative, based on a layering of visual metaphors.

The precedent for my most recent work comes from Spanish artist Francisco de Goya’s iconic (and prophetic) graphic statement on the politics of his time, ‘The sleep of reason produces monsters’. Goya’s etching, from ‘ Los Caprichos’ nightmarishly reflects upon the post-revolutionary terror in France and the reactionary political situation in Spain.

My own printed narratives reflect upon the political uncertainties of our times, provoking the questioning of current western policies, particularly towards the Middle-East, and challenging our assumptions of the moral and cultural superiority of western democratic values. Events surrounding the recent war on Iraq are central to this latest body of work, reflected in the eclectic mix of biblical, classical and historical imagery, and in the references to religious conflict, persecution and execution.

21 Countries

In February 2004 I exhibited a provocative installation of 21 ceramic plates at the Imperial War Museum North, in Manchester, England. These plates were printed with imagery referencing U.S. foreign policy since 1945, inspired by an advertisement placed in the national newspapers by the ‘Stop the War’ coalition; “Since the end of the Second World War, the United States Government has bombed 21 countries”. These countries ranged from China in 1945 to Iraq in 2003. (Some of these attacks were made with the active support of coalition forces, including Britain, while other conflicts saw the U.S. acting independently, despite worldwide protest.)

The plates were not meant to be interpreted as individual and literal representations of each country, instead they were to be viewed as a related series exploring a central theme, which questioned the common assertion that “The United States is a force for good all over the world”.

Metaphor and allegory

Like many students of the enigmatic Eduardo Paolozzi at the Royal College of Art in the 1980’s, I was ‘trained’ to focus my obsessions into a language of visual references, to develop a personal iconography or ‘alphabet’ of resonant and relevant images. Recent additions to my own ‘alphabet’ include images of war and peace (the classical story of Venus and Mars), scary monsters (robots, chimeras and the machinery of modern warfare) biblical iconography (angels, dragons and the whore of Babylon) incarceration (the imaginary prisons of Piranesi) and decapitation (the myth of Perseus and Medusa).

A number of related themes and narratives weave in and out of the printed and modelled imagery, appearing on several pieces in varying contexts and combinations. For example, one underlying theme, ‘George and the Dragon’, references the western tradition of ‘good versus evil’ narratives, and parallels the polarisation of attitudes in the current struggle against global terrorism. ‘George’ can therefore stand for the mythical knight Saint George, or for George Washington, icon of democratic values, or, in more contemporary terms, current U.S. president George W. Bush

The slab-built forms of my large pieces are loosely derived from vessels associated with the petroleum industry; oil drums, petrol cans etc. This references a long tradition of pottery’s imitation of more valuable metal vessels, but also provides a formal metaphor for the western obsession with Middle-Eastern oil supplies.

‘Decorating’ these ceramic forms, iconic images of classical sculpture rub shoulders with pop and media imagery. This clash of incongruous images points up the duality of contemporary western society, contrasting the high and low points of a culture equally capable of producing the Renaissance and the Holocaust, the Sistine Chapel and the cluster bomb.