Making Handles
Handles Expenditure @ Sector 2237
2018
What is whole without a part? What is a part without a whole? In Handles Expenditure, Liz McCarthy explores pulled clay handle forms, cast through a traditional wet pulling process performed with her body. Her hand was the tool for making the form, and the traditional handle form was intended to be held by a hand. The protrusions in this installation are represented as forms autonomous from a vessel, rendering them useless, purposeless, excess, expenditure. We expect the handle to be mounted, connected, useful in its position to the cup. There are many forms we expect to have use; tireless and familiar, like a body and a vessel, specified rather than ambiguous. A vessel is expected to be a container, and the body seeks to consume its contents. The handle mediates this connection and in merging two vessels – body and cup – both forms intended to empty and fill.