Making Bricks

Making Bricks is a project that looks at brick production, use and reuse in India and explores this as the source of a contemporary sculptural language.

Over the development of the project various modes of ‘reflection’ underpinned each step. Different participants, ranging from brick masons in Delhi to graffiti artists in Northern England continually changed the project’s direction.

Inspired by the micro-industrial brick production techniques used in India, as well as an approach to recycling building materials driven by economic necessity. I begin with 50,000 tiny hand-made bricks. Over a period of several years, and in many different situations these bricks were the building blocks from which a series of sculptures was developed. Each completed work is exhibited for a short time, and then broken up so that the constituent parts can be recycled into a new work. When the bricks are dismantled at the end of each sculpture, the team who will help make the next one  are invited to reflect on where the project should go next. Each completed sculpture is temporarily held together with a skin of paint, and the bricks progressively acquire a surface ‘patina’, a history accreted layers of colour that gradually reveals the history of their previous use. These marks also bear witness to the actions of the various collaborators in the project. Through this process, Making Bricks examines how an artistic language can be developed to explore ideas around recycling, the sustainability of sculpture and collaborative work.

Andrew Burton, Professor of Fine Art, Newcastle University