Consciousness/concience

A ceramic installation made from bone china that is designed to be destroyed: audiences crush the 8000 floor tiles by walking

over them to view other works in the gallery space. Won a certificate of merit at the 1st World Ceramic Biennale, Korea. Consciousness/Conscience is a ceramic installation that is designed to be destroyed, engaging with the notion of temporary

works in the crafts sector. Made from one of the most precious and revered materials in the clay spectrum, bone china, the

public have to walk over the 8000 floor tiles to view other works in the gallery space. The resultant crushed boxes trace the

pattern of activity in the same way tracks are recorded in snow.

This work has been exhibited three times. It was first presented in Korea (2001) at the opening of the first World Ceramic

Biennale in Icheon where it won a certificate of merit, secondly at the Crafts Council, London (2003), and finally at A Secret

History of Clay at Tate Liverpool (2004). Its three manifestations in three very different contexts - both architecturally and

museologically - have furthered Twomey’s development of her practice, focussing her research both on the possibilities of

ceramics to be used radically within the gallery space and on the nature of interaction of the audience.

Consciousness/Conscience has been cited in several publications, including 20th Century Ceramics by Edmund de Waal

(Thames and Hudson 2004); the exhibition catalogue for ‘A Secret History of Clay’ (Tate Publishing 2004); and Porcelain and

Bone China (Crowood Press 2004).

Twomey gave a paper at the Tate conference ‘Rethinking Clay’ (2004) alongside Richard Deacon, Edward Lucie-Smith,

Edmund De Waal and Martina Margetts. Her paper raised awareness of the conceptual content of the use of the materials in

her own works and contextualised her installation within the larger area of the engagement of the crafts with current theory and

the wider visual arts.

Consciousness/Conscience was funded by Royal Crown Derby (£8000).