Making, Tracing: A Journey Back From England to the Polish Stetl

David Jones, Dark Noise, 2014

Talk by David Jones about his discovery that his creative work in clay & installation has become a medium for expressing his Jewish heritage

A Conversation with Ceramic Artist David Jones

David Jones’ mother was born in Germany, and escaped the fate of her parents in the murder camps, by leaving on the Kindertransport to the UK. He was aware from an early age of that history, but it did not intrude on his life in the latter half of the 20th Century. It has only been in recent years that this fact has been pressing hard on his awareness.

David’s ceramic work has always featured cuts, cracks and distortions, that subsequently only started to make sense to him with such an interpretation. Grenzerfahrung was the name (meaning “Borderline experience”) that he gave to the liminal conditions between a conscious understanding and intuitive feeling for meaning in the work: the burnt, blackened clay surfaces that could be summoned to stand for the destinies of his ancestors and relatives; the appalling synergy between the potter’s kiln and the ovens of the Holocaust.

He will also discuss a range of positive outcomes that have evolved through working collaboratively with groups in Germany and Latvia that focus on meeting, hospitality and rapprochement.

The session will be chaired by art historian Julia Weiner, who co-curated Shaping Ceramics, an exhibition held at the Jewish Museum, London in 2016-17, which included David’s work.

To book, click here.