Clare Twomey

White Lilliputian figurines appear to dance, tumble and march across the floor of a dimly lit gallery at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, where British ceramicist Clare Twomey was invited to create an installation inspired by the museum’s collection. The artist selected three examples from the Gardiner’s 18th-century commedia dell’arte porcelains, and by creating myriad simulacra has raised questions about the value of authenticity, of both the artist’s hand and the object itself.

The three originals were scanned to create moulds so that Twomey, along with five assistants, could create the more than 2000 reproductions. The artist then arranged the copies in a haphazard way, creating the effect of a chaotic crowd. The surface of the majority of the figures is matte, but a few are glazed and these are placed randomly. These glinting insertions are read as more polished, complete works. The inclusion of moulds and broken pieces, and the scattered stacking of objects produces a dynamic effect spread across the vast floor.

The white reproductions are overseen by the three colourful originals displayed at one end of the gallery, set on high pedestals and protected in vitrines. This arrangement indicates a hierarchy that appears to privilege the originals, whose backs are turned to the audience. It is impossible to examine these; instead, visitors are able to crouch down to inspect the copies. As is usual in the museum context, we are distanced from the precious originals.

Opposite the vitrines, tools and moulds are arranged on a large table. This workbench is where one member of the small team of ceramicists works on-site each day producing additional reproductions to add to the installation. Twomey subverts the artist’s traditional role by relinquishing control over the project. For this component of the exhibition, she no longer determined the production or arrangement of the objects.

Gallery lighting highlights the originals and the ceramicists’ workbench, which face each other across the dimly lit field of white copies, and a relationship between the maker and the 18th-century porcelains does emerge. The originals represent the highest quality and are validated by the institution. The makers are confronted with this as they endeavour to achieve comparable success, although within a value framework entirely different from that of the originals. The unpolished figurines with visible seams and made in 2014 would have been discarded if produced in the 1700s. However, Twomey’s fabrication process does echo in some aspects that of the original porcelains. The 18th-century statuettes were designed by a modeller (perhaps comparable to the role of artist), and then moulds were used in a factory to cast the object. Many individuals were involved in the creation of the final product, similar to the evolving Gardiner installation. It would be possible for Twomey to utilize technology to mass-produce exact replicas, but she has chosen this method, simultaneously distancing the hand of the artist, while emphasizing the hand of the maker.

The use of multiple assistants could be seen as similar to other artists’ practices, such as Jeff Koons’s factory-like production, albeit Twomey’s is on a significantly smaller scale. The ceramicist’s more intimate method is collaborative, particularly if we consider the additions that continue unsupervised by her. The performative component in the gallery highlights the participation of others, unlike the usually minimal recognition given to assistants.

The gradual growth of this installation contrasts with Twomey’s work, Trophy, 2006, for which she produced 4000 clay birds, which were then installed in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Cast Courts. Visitors were invited to steal a bird for their own personal collection, and in a matter of hours the installation had disappeared.

“Piece by Piece” may also be understood within a trajectory of projects that position the artist as curator delving into a collection to present it anew. More than 20 years ago Fred Wilson did this as a post-colonial critique in “Mining the Museum,” 1992. Spring Hurlbut curated “The Final Sleep,” 2001, at the Royal Ontario Museum for which she selected white objects from the institution’s collections. These were assigned equal value in the installation and displayed without contextual information, consistent with Hurlbut’s interest in taxonomies but unprecedented in this setting. Such projects re-present collections, but perhaps more importantly they interrogate the authoritative voice of the museum. In addition to blurring the boundaries between curator, artist and museum, Twomey takes this questioning further by suspending distinctions between museum, studio and factory.

The value of the commedia dell’arte copies as craft, as fakes, or as art objects will be further complicated after the gallery is de-installed in preparation for the next exhibition. The originals will return to the safety of either storage or permanent display inside vitrines, but what will happen to the copies? Will these be placed in museum storage, which is often in short supply, with space for only the finest objects? Will they be destroyed? Or, perhaps distributed so that others may possess an authentic Twomey, regardless of whose hands produced the object. ❚

“Piece by Piece” was exhibited at the Gardiner Museum, Toronto, from October 4, 2014 to January 4, 2015.

Krystina Mierins is a writer and educator living in Toronto.