Over 12 days in May 2009, I installed "Rift" at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art in the UK. This was one of four works in the exhibition "Possibilities and Losses."

People entering the gallery are invited to walk on wooden boardwalks that rise and fall through the installation.

Discarded metal from the local scrap yard intersect with and interrupt the flow of movement in the space.

Two Plexiglas structures surround the ceramic objects. One is a tall narrow cylinder reaching from floor to ceiling, and the other is a shorter oval enclosure hovering above a pool of dark water. Moving images are projected onto the far wall. These sound/video clips document the events of opening night.

Surrounded by an oval boardwalk and a narrow moat, the ceramic form leans toward people walking by. Inhabited by bits of ceramic kitsch (old fishermen, bearded scholars, glass flowers and fake jade) it lurches forward in an dark pool of water.

Ceramic forms in the tall narrow cylinder are skewered into place with hollow metal rods.

On opening night, curator James Brighton emerges on hands and knees, high above the crowd, from the wall to the left. Wearing headlamp, hardhat and safety goggles, he crawls through a horizontal tube and begins to crack open the ceramic forms in the tall narrow cylinder.

Shards and chunks of debris fall down through the tall cylinder, through a hole in the boardwalk and onto the bare floor below.

To the right of the round boardwalk are salvaged ship ladders, ceramics and discarded wood.

Glazed porcelain slab over hand-built stoneware grids. Some of its skirt-like edges flex with the push of a finger.

Using a dull wooden knife and mallet, Beighton breaks though the porcelain skins to reveal what is underneath. Sometimes there are objects, sometimes grids or air pockets. Thank you to the Middlesbrough Scrapyard for the loan of the metal fragments.

Ted Yoon's white glazed stoneware T-shapes behind a ship ladder.

A breeze blows from within the gallery wall through a metal duct, into the ceramic form and onto the surface of the water.

Curator James Beighton confronts the large ceramic form. He enters the oval enclosure by stepping over the moat, through the door, and onto slate stepping-stones. With pointed tools, Mr. Beighton cracks open the piece and shards fall into the pool of water.

Hand-pinched and extruded ceramics with found metal on floor.