Photo credit: Guy Smallman
Winner of the Art School’s Student Initiated Project Prize 2019, Art & Material Histories postgraduate student, Roberta De Caro, has organised a series of workshops for survivors of domestic abuse in which she will explore how the material qualities of glass can be used to reconstruct, repair and heal the fragmented self.
Held in the Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre, Lambeth, participants will manipulate shards of coloured glass to create new fused glass objects that will not only reflect and refract the light, but also their own histories and experiences.
The workshops are the meeting point of different aspects of Roberta’s practice and the Art & Material Histories course: an engagement with materials and materiality; their cultural associations; a close attention to their socio-political concerns; an interrogation of the human condition through the material world.
Roberta explains: “In this series of workshops, I am particularly interested in observing the different emotions that glass-making might elicit and how these can relate to the experience of surviving domestic abuse. These emotions can range from fear of manipulating a fragile but sharp material, to a sense of achievement in creating new objects from fragments. The whole process can be a powerful cathartic experience”.
From the Fragment to the Whole Glass Workshops will be held on 16, 23 and 30 March 2020 in the Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre, Lambeth. For more information about the workshops, or if you are interested in assisting, please contact r.decaro@cglas.ac.uk.
To find out more about the MA in Art & Material Histories, watch the course video and book onto an open day. For further help, please email us at admissions@citandguidsartschool.ac.uk.