Collaborative & Collective Works: haptic/tacit - Mentors

Brick in nine parts: found brick with porcelain.

Click the image to view the entire project. Unless otherwise stated all work © Kim Norton.

Haptic: Relating to the sense of touch, in particular relating to the perception and manipulation of objects using the senses of touch, from the Greek haptikos 'able to touch or grasp' 

Tacit: Understood or implied without being stated, from Latin tacitus, past participle of tacere 'be silent'. 

Artistic networks are important; they nurture and support, they create an environment to stimulate ideas and develop practice. But not all networks are equal; the good ones push and challenge you, they keep you on your creative toes and help you stay brave, and the very best make you feel just a bit lucky to be thought good enough to be part of them. 

Haptic/Tacit comes from such a network, formed between five makers, and their mentors, from the 2013 cohort of the Crafts Council's Hothouse programme for emerging makers. 

For this exhibition each maker has invited their mentor to show work alongside them, to demonstrate how their continuing dialogue has helped grow individual practices and to document how relationships have continued to flourish. The exhibiting partners are Thomas Appleton and Giles McDonald, Grant Aston and Bonnie Kemske, Jane Cairns and Annie Turner, Laura Grain and Shelly Goldsmith, Kim Norton and Laura Ellen Bacon. 

As a group these makers often work beyond conventional ideas of what contemporary craft is often understood to be. Not dependent upon producing functional products or even, in some cases, permanent objects they are led by ideas, material, methodologies, process, research, site and collections. What they share, and indeed as a network continue to find ways of sharing with each other, is the haptic and tacit knowledge that characterises craft making. The knowledge that the hand and eye comprehends immediately but is difficult to articulate and near impossible to communicate just with words. It is knowledge gained from experience not books and those who hold it are often unaware of its exact nature - 'they know more than they can tell'. It can only be shared through extended personal contact, in relationship, and through communities of practice, in fact as being part of the kind of network that Haptic/Tacit celebrates. 

Click the image to view the entire exhibition. Unless otherwise stated all work © Kim Norton. 

Exhibited was a new collection of smaller works called Brick in nine parts. 


Brick is a material that continues to fascinate it's a universal building block and it's also one of the oldest. 
The brick has developed from air-dried mud in the form of adobe to elaborate decorative structures using hand made bricks
In India we see light airy architecture using brick to filter light and air throughout living spaces. 
Compare that to some of the iconic brick architecture designed by Giles Gilbert Scott known for working on buildings such as the Bankside power station now known as Tate Modern, Liverpool Cathedral and Battersea power station. 

This simple rectangular form on average measures 21cm x 10cm x 6cm yet it continues to used within architecture in new and imaginative ways making it a significant part of our built environment. 

This exhibition has enabled me to look at three distinct renditions of brick from brick dust, the collected or found brick remnants to, hand-made brick forms. Examining ideas around weight and the illusion of weight. As well as reimagining our more conventional ideas associated with an everyday material that derives from clay. 

With special thanks to
Arts Council England
Crafts Council
Kimberley Chandler
Bonnie Kemske
Emily Marston, Sarah Mossop. Old Fire Station Oxford
Leyden Gallery London
Paul Hughes