“At the point of encounter, there are neither utter ignoramuses nor perfect sages; there are only people who are attempting, together, to learn more than they now know.”
— Paulo Freire

My thesis and education project develop and use a methodology for bringing an artist’s practice to the centre of a gallery based education programme. With conversation at the core, my methodology focuses on artists’ practices in order to extend that practice at the point of exhibition through co-constructive workshops with the public.

The project is in two parts. The first part engaged artists in Breadfellows’ Chats. Using clay we made physical objects together called companions. These companions are vessels to be used to share a meal — a fondue pot, or a bowl with two straws and two spaces for two spoons. They hold within them the promise of a second meeting to fulfil their practical function. These companions are produced during the focused intimacy of a conversation about practice. They are ambiguous, transitional objects. They are functional yet also embody a didactic potential. The Breadfellows’ Chats, facilitate the second part of the project, which is to develop a co-constructive workshop between the artist and the public at the point of exhibition that is resonant with the artist’s practice and does not condescend to the public. To test this approach I lead a workshop in response to Anni Puolakka and Jenna Sutela’s installation Attention Spa at TENT (Platform for contemporary art Rotterdam). In this workshop, children were invited to come to TENT for a private tour of the exhibition and to talk about the artworks on display. We used clay to make some artworks together with the children that became part of the exhibition.

My process recalibrates the development of a gallery based educational project. It does not resolve itself; it embodies potential and acknowledges that exhibition-making is often just a moment of intervention at a point in a practice. I propose that an education project could be open-ended. Facilitating dialogue and production between the artist and the public could redirect the trajectory of a work at the point of exhibition.

www.clarebreen.net

External critic: Janice McNab (Artist, Head of Masters in Artistic Research, KABK, The Hague)