Flightlines Small Talk: Ceramics and Horticulture (FULL FILM) In-Conversation with Claire Loder and Kim Norton

Tag : Horticulture

The Flightlines oral histories project was originally co-devised by Natasha Mayo and CJ O’Neill to encourage more speculative, explorative discussion of ways that sensibilities honed in the ceramic’s studio, might inform other activities in the lives that surround it. This created beautiful, humble and poignant recordings, created by bringing artists into conversation and using a series of sensory prompts as both catalyst and ad hoc structure for their discussion. These recordings can now be found on Spotify just look under: ‘Flightlines’. The ‘Flightlines: Small Talk’ series builds on this, by selecting more thematically driven dialogues and incorporating both site/environment and clay as prompt. Practices shaped by ‘Ceramics and the Environment’ has become a particularly significant area of interest.  In this film Claire Loder and Kim Norton discuss the origins of their commitment to raising awareness of environmental issues and ways of being in the world that connect clay, horticulture and the edges of ceramic practice.  The discussion takes place around a table in Claire’s back garden, the site where she co-founded ‘Blooming Whiteway’ to encourage biodiversity on the estate where she lives, to support gardeners in telling personal stories about the mosaic of green spaces that grow there and beyond the estate, to exploring explore how we as humans fit into the commonwealth of life. Kim’s ‘Soil Library’ was part of the landmark exhibition ‘Soil: the world at our feet’ at Somerset House, along with a collaborative work undertaken during her residency with a group of allotment plot holders titled ‘Kinship to Land’ 2024 measuring soil health and microbe activity.