Project
TheVertex
About theProject
The Vertex project is an ongoing initiative created by artist Ben Clubbs to create, with your support, 20,000 ceramic baby heads, to represent the multitudes of children lost in war and conflict around the world. Each piece represents a soul: fragile, unique, and alive in its own quiet way. Together, they form a growing committee of remembrance and judgement and defiance. The number 20,000 is not symbolic but the estimated number of babies and children lost in Gaza over the recent war. It is a reflection of catastrophic loss, of children and babies whose lives were cut short. The project seeks to hold space for those lives, to give physical form to absence, and to remind us of the shared fragility of all life.
We will spend funds on clay and firing and glazes as well as organising workshops and exibitions. We hope to raise awareness with MPs and in the community also. Any remaining funds will go to charities such as Medical Aid for Palitinians, UNICEF, and Highland - Palistine, seeking to support children who suffer in conflict.
The Making Process
Every doll head is handmade in clay. Each one different, each one with a name, personality, and life formed in the making and firing process.
Some are modelled alone in the studio. Others are created in workshops and collective settings, shaped by many hands and voices. The process itself is part of the work: a communal act of making, mourning, and care.
After forming, the heads are bisque fired. They are then finished using a range of experimental glazes, including:
- Ash glaze, created from burned organic material — a reminder of life and death intertwined.
- Salt glaze, which reacts unpredictably in the kiln, creating unique surface textures.
- Other mixed and test glazes, experimenting with colour, transparency, and accident.
The variation in glaze and firing, the cracks, blisters, drips, and transformations, is part of the life of each baby. Even those that break or warp are kept. None are discarded.
Get Involved
You can become part of the Vertex project by making your own clay baby and sending it to info@babyheads.co.uk or to our Instagram account here.
Make a Baby:
- Use air-drying or fired clay.
- Make a small doll head — it can be abstract, figurative, or symbolic.
- Give it a name and, if you wish, a short description of who it represents.
Post Your Babyhead photo:
Send to info@babyheads.co.uk or to our Instagram account here.
Future Exhibitions
When all 20,000 clay babies are gathered, they will come together in a monumental installation filling a big space such as the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in London. The work will stand as a collective act of memory, compassion, and defiance against the destruction of life.
