Presentation:

Firing

with Ruchama Noorda

5 Jul 2021

We usher in summer with a firing ritual in the Tumulus! This growing garden installation takes on different forms each season, and this summer, it is centred around the fire. Ruchama is working on a ceramic-wood sculpture that connects elements transformed by heat. See the sculpture evolve, warm up to the flames, watch clay transform into ceramics, and join a raku session to celebrate summer in the northern hemisphere. 

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Suzanne and Ruchama during the different stages of firing - Anne Lakeman

This spring and summer are all about fire, tar, and substances transformed by the heat of the fire. The hermits' shelter on the Tumulus is painted black with wood tar. This is an ancient way of preserving wood and protecting it from rotting processes. Meanwhile, earthen clay turns into ceramics in a kiln and is glazed on the bank in front of the barn. Ruchama brings the elements together in a ceramic-wood sculpture that will gradually appear on the Tumulus garden over the next few weeks. During the celebration, more elements will be created and added.

Tumulus

Tumulus is an enclosed garden installation that functions as a natural ruin, compost heap, soil sculpture, seedbed, earthwork, dyeing source, and dunghill. Over the course of several seasons from June 2019 onwards, artist Ruchama Noorda transforms the patch of greenery next to our Sluisdeurenloods into a living sculpture and performance site.

Ruchama Noorda

Ruchama Noorda is an artist who uses diverse media and materials in performances and installations. She received a PhD degree from the University of Leiden, where she researched the early 20th-century Lebensreform (Life Reform) movement. Noorda recycles Lebensreform teaching, arts, crafts, dance, diet, and ritual practices in her practice. These works both engage with and challenge the communitarian and counter-cultural aspirations, practices and beliefs of movements inspired by Lebensreform. Her works function as a sort of séance by highlighting the mystical and magical elements of these traditions. By making this the subject of her work, Noorda wants to excavate the histories of these movements that were often overshadowed by the ideologies of Modernist art movements.

Information

Monday, July 5, 17:00 - 20:00