Movement and materiality intersect in William Cobbing’s clay works

Two performers sit with their backs to each other, their bodies engulfed by a cavernous mound of raw clay. Their arms snake out from this mass probing the uneven lumps on its surface. We see and hear the clay—it is wet, heavy and sticky and it produces a soundscape of tiny squelches. The performers' disembodied arms make the most of their limited range of motion, sliding their palms along its undulating surface and slowly kneading the clay into new forms. These are glimpses from Social Substance Films, a seven-video loop by artist William Cobbing, who works in sculpture, ceramics, installation and performance. Social Substance Films is one of four works by Cobbing at the Messums West Ceramic Season 2024, curated by Natalie Baerselman le Gros, assistant curator and exhibitions coordinator at Messums Org.

Cobbing trained as a sculptor, studying at Central St. Martins and De Ateliers in Amsterdam. He also completed a PhD in Practice at Middlesex University. Cobbing admits to a fascination with the notion of entropy, where the lines between the body, material and the environment are constantly in flux. This is Messums West’s second ceramics season; Cobbing’s work is part of Of the Earth, one of three exhibitions featuring works by over 100 artists, showcasing works that offer a history of the medium while reflecting on their environmental implications.

Of the Earth foregrounds clay as an artistic medium and natural resource. Cobbing has four works in the show, drawing on sculpture, ceramics and performance. In Headspace (Will.je.suis, 2023), a video played on a loop is encased within a plaster and canvas head. Spectators look through the ‘eyes’ of the sculpture into the depths of its head to access the video. This interplay of raw clay and digital elements is a common thread in Cobbing’s work. Both his clay sculptures and the digital devices he uses to draw on natural resources—on the earth and the minerals and metals beneath its surface. But both mediums have a very different relationship with touch—while the clay is relentlessly tactile, screens are flattened interfaces, confining haptic experience to a single surface. Cobbing complicates this dichotomy by framing his complex engagement with clay within the digital interface.

In Obsidian Tomb (2023), a giant human hand grasps a flat-screen TV rimmed with clay. The artwork is simultaneously a sculpture capturing movement in time and space and a continuous record of interactions between the corporeal and the material. On the TV’s video feed, we see zoomed-in views of human hands gently stroking a mass of raw clay. There are no major changes to the shape of the mass, or any definitive outcomes—the ‘doing’ is the work.

In Cobbing’s practice, time is a container for performative explorations with clay. In conversation with STIR, he speaks about the literary and mythical references that underpin his work, his understanding of time, duration and materiality through clay and his relationship to technology. Cobbing’s works are exhibited in the Messums Barn, which will also host the gallery’s annual ceramics symposium on Saturday, April 6, 2024. The Messums West Ceramic Season is on until April 29, 2024.

Tap the cover video to watch William Cobbing in conversation with STIR.