About Man-Handled

By Paul Morris, Co Founder of the Armoury Show

​​Man-Handling, the solo show by Cape Town born, London based artist Will Martin, includes both ceramic objects and records of the performative dinners.
These Supper Clubs have been produced over the past year with curatorial partner Davy Pittoors.

Martin’s art making divides into two practices.  He creates ceramic art objects, some of which can also function as traditionally useful vessels, and performative events where he includes these objects.  By utilizing his art in this way, he brings to the fore the timeless challenge that confronts any artist working with ceramics,- art versus design.  For Martin, by infusing the works with personal meaning and identity, the answer is clear that it is both.  A vase, for example, can be an aesthetic sculptural art piece as well as an object that holds flowers.

Martin turned to his own experience as a gay man and artist for meaning and content in his art. Gay men grow up in heteronormative spaces, traditions and behavior. Martin seeks to reclaim for example the simple act of a family dinner - where as a boy Martin felt the most comforted in his childhood home. Here Martin jettisons traditional dinnerware patterns for hand painted phalluses or text that refer to homosexual slang for alpha males. It's a very direct way to start creating domestic spaces with iconography specifically related to a gay sexual and political reality. Martin also confronts this through abstraction. In the case of the moon vases many are made with clay foraged from a famous gay cruising ground in Hampstead Heath.

Martin and Pittoors have produced supper club dinners at both the Museum of the Home in London and in Martin’s backyard, home and studio.  The Museum and Martin’s home are the perfect venues to directly question the meanings and evolving definitions for what is a home, whether it be heteronormative, gay or queer.  Meals by their nature encourage sharing and thus supper club participants become integral to the experience and dialogue.  “I would say it is about objects as tools for care, the importance of a chosen family and the freedom to make your own queer associations”, Martin explains.