Making the Urns in

Описание: In this short film, potter Joanna Howells can be seen making one of the 42 vases needed for the staging of Howard Brenton's play, #aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei - now available to watch on our or the Guardian's websites until Sunday 3 May, 10pm.
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Howells, who works from a studio in Wales, has had plenty of experience producing ceramic ware, but she has never had a commission quite like this one. For those familiar with Ai Weiwei, it might not be too hard to extrapolate which of his artworks would require such a large number of replica props for its realization to the stage, and why this would be such an unusual commission for an artist like Joanne.

Dubbed 'the Beijing Andy Warhol', Ai Weiwei receives international recognition for his ground-breaking work and his efforts to effect social change in China. In 2012 ArtReview listed the 100 most powerful people in the art world and put him at number 3. Political activism and headlining work such as his collaboration with Herzog and de Meuron in the design of the 'Bird's Nest' Olympic Stadium in Beijing have brought him worldwide attention, which later intensified when he denounced the Games as a 'fake smile', an allusion to the oppression he claimed lay beneath the public face of celebration.

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