david jones
leamington spa, england, UK
David Jones in his studio at the EKWC (European Ceramic Work Centre), The Netherlands, where he was an Artist in Residence in 2019, working on the relationship of analog and digital fabrication in clay.
David Jones, Touching Touch, 2019. Bone China, polished. 8 cm x 4 cm x 3 cm
David Jones, Touching Touch, 2019. Red earthenware, polished. 130 cm x 120 cm x 14 cm
On March 16, 2020, I suddenly felt a little ill. I went to bed. One week, and many tablets of Paracetamol later I remembered who I was. I showered. My scented geranium soap had completely lost its smell. I informed everyone via WhatsApp that I was better. I slowly peeled an orange; it had absolutely no taste. My three doctor-cousins informed me I had a very unusual condition called anosmia.
Three days later I started to develop pneumonia. A course of antibiotics left me exhausted, but no longer ill. I opened every bottle in my spice store and could neither smell nor taste any of them. I was totally self-isolating: tactile deprivation. Of the five senses, only sight and hearing remained. I sat in my garden in the young sunlight, watching and listening to the spring, a neophyte. My world evolved new meanings. It was discovered that infection with the COVID-19 virus could give rise to the mysterious symptoms I had experienced.
Time stretched and compressed. In recovery, I sat and watched the plants growing, each day. I started walking in parks and the countryside again. I breathed the air — clear of pollution. I had time to reflect but no energy to work. What might be the meaning of this time and how could I communicate it?
I am living surrounded by a body of work that has lost its home due to the pandemic. During the first three months of 2019 I had completed a residency at the European Ceramic Work Centre (EKWC) in the Netherlands. I made work that reflected the apparently simple question that had underpinned my creative life and my PhD: “What does it mean to make something by hand?”
Simple squeezings of clay, formed just in my hand or created with one other person, were magnified after digital scanning, then those files were used to generate larger 3D images to cut a mold. The molds were used to make objects that were at the same time familiar yet uncanny – negative spaces of our hands made larger – strange, and still recognizable. How might their place in an installation communicate differently? I no longer had any exhibition possibilities open.
As I held the objects in my post-COVID daze, they spoke to me of the absence of touch. There were pieces formed after my solitary pressing of the clay. Other, similar pieces were the instantiation of a meeting with someone: a never-to-be-repeated moment of encounter. The clay prints of the negative space of our hands had captured a slice of time-flow. Both had been also transformed by magnification and made uncanny. In the stretched time, I have re-conceived this work as a post-COVID statement.
A Meaning-Maker requires Meaning-Seekers. Right now I am searching for an audience. So here I present my work and its re-thinking to you.
during the LOCKDOWN, DAVID JONES has been recovering from COVID-19, breathing clean air, and refreshing his thinking by walking and cultivating.
David Jones, Touch portrait, 2020. “My hands with the hands of my granddaughter and her father.”
David Jones, “My hand with a Styrofoam mold of the enlarged negative space of my hand” (used for pressing Touching Touch, 2019).
David Jones, “My hand and my friend Robin’s (larger) hand, demonstrating the ‘uncanny’ nature of a bone china cast of Touching Touch, 2020.
David Jones, Touching Touch: Cut, 2020. Red earthenware, with squash stem. 13 cm x 7 cm x 5 cm
David Jones, Touching Touch: Push, 2020. Red earthenware. 14 cm x 13 cm x 5 cm
David Jones, Touching Touch: Squash, 2020. Red earthenware with squash. 7 cm x 3 cm x 2 cm