That same year, Twomey transformed Tate Modern in London into a functioning factory for everyday ceramic objects. Featuring a 30-metre production line, kilns, storage racks, and a workforce of 40 operators, the installation invited visitors to take part directly in the making of cups, jugs, and vases. In doing so, it encouraged reflection on the role of industrial production and its relationship to the communities that surround it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Building on these experiences, we met with the artist to talk about cups, factories, and archaeological artefacts \u2013 and about how all these seemingly different things are connected through the enduring magic of clay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In your project <\/em><\/strong>Manifest: 10,000 Hours at the York Art Gallery the idea of participation and community emerges strongly. How does this collective dimension connect to industry, mechanization and labor for you?<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I am particularly interested in the relationship between people and everyday objects, and in the ways material culture becomes entangled with memory, emotion, and lived experience. The ceramic cup is intimately embedded within daily life. If I ask someone about their favourite cup, they rarely think of the object in purely functional terms; instead, they recall a specific moment, atmosphere, or emotional attachment. These seemingly ordinary objects become vessels for personal and collective memory, revealing a shared emotional vocabulary grounded in domestic experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This interest extends into my participatory works, where the community is not simply an audience but an essential constituent of the artwork itself. In projects such as the one in York Museum, the most compelling project was the names of the 150 participants who worked on the production were included on the gallery label, making explicit the collective authorship embedded within the work. The participants worked within a predetermined form, echoing the regulated processes of industrial production and factory systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This dialogue between collective participation, labour, and production also informed my work Factory<\/em> at Tate Modern. There, visitors were invited to enter the space of the factory itself \u2013 to encounter processes that are usually concealed from public view. Participants could handle the material directly, open a mould, and reveal a jug emerging from it. For many, particularly those unfamiliar with ceramic production, the experience was both revelatory and transformative, collapsing the distance between maker, object, and process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am interested in the way machines can facilitate access, repetition, and wider distribution, while remaining fundamentally dependent upon human intention and agency. Machines are not substitutes for human creativity or labour; rather, they are instruments through which human thought, touch, and social experience can be extended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Italy there is a long tradition of high-quality ceramic craftsmanship, but it is fragmented by regions and influences. In the UK, however, there seems to be a more unified craft culture, partly thanks to the tradition of studio pottery (<\/em><\/strong>professional and amateur <\/em><\/strong>ceramists<\/em><\/strong> working alone or in small groups, making unique items or short runs, sometimes for artistic purpose, ed.)<\/em><\/strong>. How do you interpret this dual heritage \u2013 craftsmanship and industry \u2013 in your artistic practice?<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I do not see craft and industry as opposing forces, I understand them as deeply interconnected and mutually sustaining. When I encountered the Wedgwood complex at its height of production, employing nearly 30,000 workers, it was clear that it represented far more than a site of mass production. It functioned as a complex social and creative ecosystem in which labour, skill, material knowledge, and community were profoundly intertwined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the centre of this relationship is the question of intention: why we make, and for whom. While nineteenth-century industrialisation undeniably disrupted many local pottery traditions, it is important to recognise that small-scale potters, like industrial manufacturers, were also engaged in systems of production shaped by economic necessity and social function. They served their communities in much the same way that contemporary studio potters, manufacturers, and artisans continue to do today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The origins of the ceramic industry itself lie in the gesture of the maker \u2013 in the embodied knowledge required to throw a pot well. What we now identify as the language of studio pottery emerged historically through industrial contexts and systems of production. Although these skills have shifted across different spaces, economies, and cultural meanings over time, the fundamental gesture remains remarkably constant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even today at Wedgwood, the Portland Vases<\/em> continue to be turned by hand within the context of a factory environment. For me, this demonstrates the fluidity of the categories we often impose upon making. Studio practice and industry are not antagonistic conditions, but rather interconnected points within a continuous historical and material evolution. Clay moves across eras, technologies, and systems of labour, adapting to changing contexts while retaining an enduring connection to the human hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In pre-modern societies, the role of women in craft and community was central, but with industrialization, it was often reduced or polarized \u2013 the woman as mother or as factory worker, two opposing roles. Today, these distinctions seem more fluid. In your work, one senses a balance between enchantment and concreteness, between magic and modernity. Why is it important for you to maintain this \u2018magic\u2019 without falling into the rhetoric of the ancient?<\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I believe that clay possesses an intrinsic capacity to evoke a sense of wonder; it does not require excessive intervention or embellishment in order to become meaningful. The sense of \u2018magic\u2019 associated with clay is already embedded within the material itself. This remains true even in its most utilitarian or technical forms, such as brick. Consider the Colosseum: while concrete can be celebrated as a great engineering innovation of the ancient world, I am equally fascinated by the enduring presence of the brick \u2013 a material that has survived, materially and symbolically, for nearly two millennia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clay carries a profound sense of geological and cultural memory. Regardless of how it is processed, filtered, pigmented, or transformed, it continues to speak of origins, of matter, and of continuity across time. Its material language is inseparable from the history of human civilisation and from the earth itself. Clay is a way of understanding the world through the perspective of a material that has accompanied humanity since its beginnings. It embodies both permanence and transformation. A material shaped continuously by human touch.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.humus-digitalmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/07-Manifest-10000-Hours-1-Photo-Sylvain-Delue--1024x682.jpeg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.humus-digitalmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/04-FACTORY-01-Tate-Modern-Photo-Matt-Greenwood-1024x682.jpeg\")