Aliyah Hussain is at an exciting point in her career. Recent successes include a solo exhibition at Lowry; being featured alongside works by Salvador Dali, Leonora Carrington and Jean Arp in The Hepworth’s, 100 Years of Surrealist Landscapes; and an Artist Fellowship at the UCLan ceramics department. A ceramicist who also works across sound, collage and digital, Hussain’s work constructs narratives out of abstract and ornate sculptural forms. She has also previously taken part in community projects, such as ‘Dinner Service’ (2021) with The Kitchen Table Collective and At The Library, an initiative that opened up conversations and social connectedness around the theme of food. There, Hussain led workshops in which participants could create playful clay objects inspired by the kitchen. All of which leads into her most recent commission with Touchstones.
Rochdale’s museum and art gallery, Touchstones, closed in 2023 to begin a major redevelopment of the building, with plans set to include new performance spaces, studio spaces, and improved galleries. As part of the project, Touchstones has commissioned artists Camara Pinnock, Ibukun Baldwin, and Hussain to each develop an installation for a section of a new gallery to be named ‘The Dining Room’. The choice of name is significant – reflecting the idea to integrate food, socialising, art and heritage in a public space. By reimagining the domestic setting of a dining room, it signals a move away from a traditional gallery, placing food and social connection at the centre. By extension, there will be a focus on community engagement and accessibility, and on creating a space not just to view art, but to sit, eat, use and connect with people.
The whole project has involved a rethinking of museum practices, considering topical ideas around representing and engaging diverse voices – practically, in terms of audience attraction and visitor experience, as well as the role of the permanent collection. This approach is woven into every aspect of the planned restructure. For example, from the start of the project, Touchstones have recruited twenty paid ‘Community Curators’ who come from diverse, non-art backgrounds across Rochdale. These community members have been invited to participate in every aspect of developing the new visitor experience, having a say in decision-making, as well as contributing to the making of the physical artworks. When I visit Hussain at her UCLan studio, I learn that her role too has extended far beyond making the physical artwork. Involved from the outset of the project, Hussain has designed and led workshops with community participants, facilitating the creation of objects for the final installation, as well as developing her commission in line with the values which underpin the redevelopment.
For the commission itself, Hussain is developing a ceramic multi-object installation, which will take the form of food and heritage-related objects suspended from the ceiling over dining room tables and chairs. The various objects will comprise of small and larger items, including individually-made tiles decorated with sprig moulds (hand-shaped decorative sculptures usually applied to pottery before firing); 3D-printed pottery, such as plates and cups; as well as Hussain’s own sprawling, ornate sculptural forms which characterised her recent Lowry exhibition, ‘She was waiting for her roots’, 2024. At the moment, she sees these various objects being suspended from the ceiling using string shopping bags. Each ceramic object bears a connection to the themes of the project, either by referencing Rochdale Borough’s collection and Rochdale’s heritage or by filling in gaps in the collection, by including new and diverse stories around the theme of food. Other elements also focus on accessibility. Tiles will feature on the dining tablesthat incorporate the three-dimensional moulds and can be accessed through touch, alongside textual elements stamped onto objects in English, Cyrillic, Urdu and braille with the same function.
Hussain views her own practice as something accessible – as a skill to be passed on, much like cooking techniques – and this has also helped integrate the project’s overall focus on inclusivity. In her own words, ‘the connection between food and ceramics is an intimate one, and the preparation of both by hand includes many technical crossovers’. She draws attention to the fact that clay is often a physical material used in cookery and dining – used to hold food and eat from – as well as the similarities in the physical actions of kneading, piping, rolling, cutting and pressing. In this vein, her work becomes more relatable – engaging audiences who might ordinarily feel excluded from art. This stands both in terms of the final artwork and programme of community engagement. In workshops, participants have been taught various techniques, enabling them to be engaged and involved in co-creating the work, whilst the theme of food has served as a way to open up conversations around culture and gather diverse stories for inclusion in the museum. For one of the workshops, Hussain invited participants to bring in foods that held strong personal memories – with contributions including items like karela, chilis, pepper, courgette. Moulds were made of these foods, which were later applied to the individual tiles. Since food is so closely associated with culture, it’s a way of representing stories of personal and shared heritage in the artwork, which come from Rochdale’s community.
Where Touchstones’ permanent collection had historically been built around each individual curator’s interests, the focus for Hussain’s commission, in line with the museum’s shifting policies around collecting and a drive to incorporate community perspectives in the process, has been on thinking through what it means to develop new objects to add to a collection. The project poses topical questions in museum practice around the role of archiving and ownership, and shifts the focus towards opening up collections to wider community groups. At the same time, there will still be a sense of continuity with what is already in the museum. As part of her research, Hussain found a number of objects with ‘temporary numbers’, which are assigned when something arrives with no record of its provenance. Within the current framework of legal and ethical codes governing a museum, this complicates the way that a public institution can dispose of or transfer items in its care, meaning many of these temporary objects are permanently held on the shelves. As part of her response to this, Hussain led a workshop where community members stamped mugs with their maker’s name, origin and date. On the surface it’s a playful notion – the physical artwork wears its archive. But on a theoretical level, it represents a sort of ownership over the narrative which institutions would usually hold the power of shaping. Made permanent by firing clay, it preserves the origins of the object, making sure that the makers are known and respected, should the ceramics ever be acquired or transferred to another collection.
One of the ways Hussain will also nod to shared heritage is by recreating commemorative ceramics which originate from The Pioneers Museum. The Pioneers Museum marks the site of the first successful cooperative society, formed in the 1840s by twenty-eight male workers in Rochdale, in response to poor wages, living conditions, and food quality during the Industrial Revolution. This cooperative established a shop offering affordable, higher-quality food to the community, and its founding principles of equal decision-making and fair profit-sharing became the foundation for modern co-operatives around the globe. Hussain will reference the commemorative ceramics by recreating their forms using a 3D-scanner and including them in the installation. Hussain will thereby weave a continuous thread through Rochdale’s history, and foreground a story about the interests of ordinary people. Also, in keeping with the co-operative’s legacy of shared ownership, Hussain’s plan is to hold an event when the installation is taken down from display, where she will give pieces away to the community. These will be items like cups and plates, which can either go on display or take up a use in people’s homes. Against traditional archival practices, here the plans challenge the notion of cultural ownership, making objects more accessible to the community, while their value occupies a place between art object and functional item.
Unfortunately, the reopening of Touchstones has now been pushed back to 2027 due to additional repair works being required. As the building stays closed, Your Trust and Hussain are continuing to work closely with residents and run community projects, working towards a public meal using the ceramics before they become part of her final installation.
Though disappointed that we’ll have to wait a little longer to see the reopening of Touchstone’s, I feel privileged that I got an insight into the project at this time. It’s given me a greater appreciation of the process and the carefully planned, thoughtful engagement and representation of the local community at every stage. The project feels like a blueprint for ways that a museum can do this proactively, and in ways that do not place all the emphasis on the final artworks going on display or being added to their collection – boldly tackling issues around the role of the museum in a way that foregoes some of its own authority. Multidirectional, rather than top-down, the project pushes Touchstones into a space that facilitates collaboration and connection around art. After leaving Hussain, I was struck by her ability to spin, weave and layer so many ideas together in the way she works. I visualise her commission as a net capturing personal memories, stories and representations in colourful, sculptural, hand-shaped forms. A piece that will evoke the warmth of sitting down at the dinner table with friends and family.
Touchstones is due to reopen in spring 2027. Alongside the dining room the building will host a programme of exhibitions and performances. Stay up to date with the redevelopment online at touchstonesrochdale.co.uk or via their mailing list Touchstones Mailing List – Your Trust.
Natalie Russett is a writer based in Manchester.
This exploration is supported by Touchstones Rochdale.
Published 22.04.2025 by Jazmine Linklater in Explorations
1,679 words
