Victoria Burgher: A Material Way Through the Mire

This is the first episode in a series on Practice. Artist Victoria Burgher explores how practice can engage with political issues such as colonialism, imperial legacy and racism. Victoria uses various materials –- for example sugar, bagass, rubber, which are all linked to colonial crimes -- to challenge symbolic values. Her current project, funded by Techne, focuses on porcelain's associations with whiteness and how subverting porcelain's material properties like 'purity', as well as its more traditional uses for fragile, nimble pieces displayed in vitrines can critique notions of white supremacy and structural racism.In short, this episode is about Victoria's attempt, through her practice, to reflect the times we're living in and to work from an actively anti-racist position, focusing in her new research on exposing whiteness.---Contributor BioVictoria Burgher is a multi-disciplinary artist who lives and works in East London. Her politically engaged practice ranges from sculptural installations and site-specific interventions to collaborative community projects. She is interested in art’s ability to challenge histories and a fascination with materials and process inform her approach to making. Current work uses colonial commodities in an attempt to challenge the nostalgic narrative of Empire. She exhibits regularly in the UK and Europe and was recently awarded a techne PhD studentship at Westminster University for her research project "Crafting counter-hegemony: using porcelain to interrogate constructed ideologies of whiteness and empire".Website: www.victoriaburgher.comTwitter: www.twitter.com/VictoriaBurgherInsta: www.instagram.com/victoriaburgher===Presented by Julien Clin.Royalty free music generously shared by Steve Oxen. FesliyanStudios.comThe Technecast is run by Julien Clin and Polly Hember. Please email [email protected] if you would like to be featured on the podcast, or if you have any questions.