After the Taking of Tea

The installation 'After the Taking of Tea' consists of over 250 pieces of ready-made tableware. It presents multiple groupings of china ware on which the imagery plays with notions of tea and teatime, its historical importance in polite society and its contemporary role in which formality for the most part has been overturned. The women make an appearance to playfully defy historical conventions. They stand on teapots, use tea sieves as mirrors and microphones, and nonchalantly walk across or rest upon the surfaces of tea crockery. The colour, use of gold and ornamentation is informed by the grand salons of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The texts appear around some of the edges of the ware, as incidental notes that reference literature, politics and the economics of tea. The imagery on each piece of ware is hand cut with a scalpel blade using screen screened and digitally made enamel ceramic transfers that are then fired.

The installation is the most ambitious to date that builds on Hodes' engagement with a pictorial language that addresses female creativity, the domestic and notions of the hierarchy in fine art painting through the use of ready-made tableware as a 'canvas'.

The installation was accompanied by 2 related papercuts @ 55cm x 72cm
'After the Taking of Tea; Light Shadow' and 'After the Taking of Tea; Grey Shadow'

It is informed by the researcher's previous two installations 'Remember Me' 2017. See 'Remember Me' on UALRO at http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/11021/ and Spode Trees & 'Dressed Silhouettes' 2015. See 'Dressed in Pattern' on UALRO at http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/9668/

'After the Taking of Tea' was the centre piece in the researcher's solo exhibition 'After the Taking of Tea and other Works' at Ruthin Craft Centre, Wales, a major UK venue for contemporary applied arts.

The exhibition at Ruthin Craft Centre also included the two installations 'Remember Me' 2017; 'Spode Trees & Dressed Silhouettes' 2015; paper cut Frieze 2017 (see Remember Me output); and a painting, 2019, based on a poem, 'Fires' by Deryn Rees-Jones.

A selection of pieces from this installation was included in the researcher's concurrent exhibition 'Women & Pattern' at The Bowes Museum, Durham, 13 Oct 2018 - 24 Feb 2019.

'After the Taking of Tea' was subsequently shown at Compton Verney in 'A Tea Journey; from the mountains to the table', curated by Antonia Harrison, 6 July - 22 September. It was shown alongside a commissioned large related papercut (184x89cm) 'Even a tea party means apprehension, breakage' that responded to a text from the Bodleian Library 'Ladies in China Cups' and an 18c. engraving from the British Museum ' The Tea Table' both shown alongside Hodes' artworks.

The installation was exhibited in a new configuration as part of the exhibition ‘Most Admirably Improved by Art’, Hestercombe, Somerset, a group exhibition inspired by the tercentenary of the birth of artist and designer, CW Bampfylde, 2 March - 28 June 2020.

• http://ruthincraftcentre.org.uk/whats-on...
• https://charlottehodes.com/portfolio/aft...