A new exhibition at The Bowes Museum has fun at his heart.
People of all ages will enjoy the Pippa Hale: Pet Project as they get their hands dirty playing on large bean bags, folding origami and painting small ceramics.
The interactive exhibition has been two years in the making and began when the museum asked the Leeds based site-specific artist to create a work in response to its ceramic collection.
Ms Hale said: “I don’t know anything about ceramics so I came into it fresh and I had to learn it all from the start.
“My thinking was there are 5,000 objects, what am I going to do in response to this? So, I decided to focus on figurines of pets, of which there are many.”
She specifically chose two objects, a Staffordshire cat and a Berlin dog.
While both are the same size and are of pets, there is a stark difference between the two.
The artist said: “The Berlin porcelain dog is high end, carefully crafted, hand-painted, a highly skilled dog destined for the elite market, whereas the Staffordshire cat is pottery, only glazed once, and probably made by children or women.
“It’s a low status object aimed at working class people sold at fairs and markets, so they just got lost or broken. The fact that it is in the collection is great.”
After selecting the, objects which she described as old, small, breakable, fragile and untouchable”, the artist decided to “turn things on their head” and create something “large, soft, squishy and playable”.
The end result is a series of two-and-half-metre high bean bags fashioned into the shape of the cat and dog ceramics.
Two have been painted in the style of the original pieces, but the others are plain white.
Ms Hale said: “Throughout the exhibition community groups and school groups will be coming in and painting their pets in the style of the Staffordshire cat and the Berlin dog. “By the end of the exhibition it will be a complete riot of colour.”
Another part of the exhibition is a display of some of the museum’s pet ceramics, including the Berlin dog and Staffordshire cat, alongside other pet ceramics which people have loaned.
A third space in the exhibition hall is for creativity where visitors will be encouraged to try their hand at folding pieces of paper to create their own origami, or to decorate their own small ceramics.
Amelia Stallworthy of the museum said: “There will be a lot of opportunities to get involved. At the heart of the exhibition is people having fun.”
The Bowes Museum is open daily 10am to 5pm.
