Piss On Pity

Piss on Pity
Made at the beginning of my MA during my first experiments with slip casting at home. I had encountered the phrase Piss on Pity through my earlier disability-led theoretical research, particularly its use within disability rights activism. At the time I was angry about my own disability, and the directness of the slogan felt appropriate. I wasn't concerned that it was crass or that it swore. I was angry, and I wanted the work to be angry too.
I slip-trailed the words directly into the plaster mould before casting, alongside hearts, faces and other marks. There wasn't yet a fixed visual language behind these decisions. I was having ideas and testing what the process could do. I also experimented with colouring the casting slip itself rather than applying colour only to the surface. This ultimately caused technical problems, as the coloured clay required a higher firing temperature for the glaze to adhere properly and areas of glaze slid away from the bisque.
The casting seam was poorly joined, so I reinforced it with additional material rather than attempting to disguise it completely. Looking back, this feels significant within the later development of my practice, where joins, drips, breaks and evidence of making increasingly became part of the visual language rather than defects to be hidden.
Although technically experimental, the piece has remained important to me. It contains many things that would recur throughout the MA: casting, handwritten language, repetition, crude imagery, visible construction and an unwillingness to make disability polite. Piss on Pity began as an angry experiment before I fully understood what my ceramic language might become.