Ceramics and the Haptic: A Haptic Exploration of Space (Portfolio)

How does the output demonstrate originality, significance and rigour?
The Significance of the research:
The haptic – and what is perceived through the sense of touch – is instrumental to how we experience ceramics and perhaps, as the oldest and the most distinctively pre-verbal of all the senses, how we understand experience itself.
However contemporary society enables us to conduct our lives with little need for contact.
A sense of this and its significance and led me to undertake a PhD at Bath Spa University, 2016.Entitled:‘Ceramics and the haptic; a case study sited in Worcester Cathedral.’
Building on this, my post-doctorial research continues to be a plea for acknowledging the role of the haptic as a way to enrich our everyday experience of the remarkable, but also of the mundane.
Originality: The methodological approach for this research adopted a maker’s sensibility, a sensual language, born out of ceramic sculpture and domestic pottery, as a way by which to consider the experience of being in the Cathedral. As a result, a new approach to the space was found.
The research concluded that the haptic is a perspective that, via ceramics, offers a tangential way to access and present a different mode of knowledge.
The post-doctorial research presented in this portfolio submission adds to these findings by exploring new contexts to test and develops the applicability of a haptic language to the investigation of a space.
Rigor: The primary aim of the post-doctorial research has been to test these ideas in relation to a variety of different creative discourses.
This was done by presenting a paper at the International ceramics conference, Aberystwyth University, about value of researching with clay.
Exhibiting in two exhibitions at the International Print Exhibition and conference, Spain, to test the validity of the ideas in relation to print.
And as a member of Space Place Practice, a multi disciplinary research group, which provides an
ongoing platform from which to further develop the ideas in a national and international fine-art arena. The work was recently exhibited in Lisbon, Portugal.