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THE CHINA HARVEST, 2018
Details
Fragments of 144 ceramic feeder cups, blown up in controlled explosions.
Installation dimensions variable.
Location: Dining Room
Photography: Keith Hunter
Video Documentary: click here (opens in new window)
Links
Artist's Newsletter article
Mount Stuart web site
Scotsman article
DESCRIPTION
This work, like others in the exhibition to The Power of Twelve, draws on the history of Mount Stuart as a WWI Naval hospital and in particular the use of the dining room as a Medical Ward. It consists of the fragmented remains of 144 white, ceramic invalid feeder cups, which were blown up in controlled explosions by the Belgian Bomb Disposal Squad in Flanders.
From to The Power of Twelve, 2018; new works drawing on Mount Stuart’s history as a naval hospital during World War One; to The Power of Twelve, The China Harvest, Wrong Right Hand, Moss Depository, Witness Boards II, Floating Groins/Fastened Groins, The Velocity of Drops.
Research/process
The feeder cup, examples of which are found within Mount Stuart’s collection, is a modest ceramic object used until the 1950’s for nursing ‘invalids’; people with a chronic illness, including the war injured. The form of the object is intriguing; caught half way between the utilitarian and luxury individualised china tea-set. Borland’s attraction to this object is largely based on a series of inherent contradictions associated with its use.
As well as its obvious use in nursing the sick, specifically the war-wounded in WWI, there is a darker side to these innocuous care-giving objects. During research for I Say Nothing, at Glasgow Museums, Borland came across references to the use of invalid cups in the force-feeding of hunger-striking suffragettes imprisoned from 1909-1914. The hunger strike, and the brutal forcible feeding that was the considered medical response, often left women seriously ill and seemingly less capable of resistance. Yet, the suffragettes transformed this most vulnerable state into a form of passive resistance. The duality of institutional care and brutality, so inherent in the complexities of war is embodied in this modest object, the form of which clearly reflects its intimate function.
Borland’s collection of 144 feeder cups, purchased largely from E-Bay, were fragmented in a controlled explosion carried out by the Belgian Bomb Disposal Unit, DOVO-SEDEE. The unit is still operational along the Western Front, in Belgium and France where the so-called ‘Iron Harvest’ of un-exploded bombs is made safe through destruction every year. In 2017, 222 tonnes of ammunition was gathered from the Ypres Salient alone.
