Testing Oven is an experimental wood-fired ceramic kiln, made with brick and comprised of two layers - a food & ceramic chamber, and a fire chamber. It invites the public to make, cook, and bake together, interacting with the Queen Victoria Market in various playful ways during Melbourne Fringe Festival 2022. Whether it be bringing homemade dough to bake a pizza, firing a coiled clay pot, or DIY-ing a toastie from the market next door, the Testing Oven is a home for warmth, play, gathering and small-scale experimentation.
Testing Grounds inaugural Public Art Park for Melbourne Fringe Festival launched this year 2022 welcoming a site-wide program featuring 28 public artworks over two weeks, including 16 sculptures and installations, 9 performances, 2 video works and a workshop.
Public Art Park aims to support emerging and established creatives to develop work for the public realm.
Testing Oven was installed in the Public Art Park.
Testing Oven intends to bring flavours, knowledge, and experiences over the table to share with everyone to have a conversation about the process of making. We hope to connect potters, ceramic enthusiasts, curious minds, and food lovers who want to contribute something to the community present at this festival, in Melbourne and worldwide. With this initiative, we aimed to explore autonomy in which we build our tools, share knowledge, create networks, and develop a participatory process enabling public interaction in the creative process.
Created with the intention to collaborate between communities and various creative fields, Testing Oven was built with the motivations to form a community of people looking for to create their own tools responding to their needs in time and space for the practice of ceramic making. This project allows each one of us to access freely to a kiln and learn the ingredients and methods used to makes this happen, with the motivation to make us more independent while connecting with the community of ceramists, makers and other curious minds looking to make a start in this craft.
This leads us to the next important project’s outcome - to share is to care. The participatory building of this kiln has allowed to create an open space to experiment and for encounters to take place. We hope the knowledge acquired in the process of building the kiln, firing ceramics will be spread around with the intention to make this practice more accessible and keep alive for the generations to come.
This last outcome englobes all of the previous purposes of the project, highlighting the need for more public interactions to take place in the creative process. The more opportunities we have to share and connect, the further this project and the community caring for this craft, can go.