YORK Art Gallery already had the biggest collection of British Studio Ceramics in the United Kingdom.

Now it has 10,000 more pieces, all newly made and piled up in one work in the new Centre of Ceramic Art (CoCA), by international artist Clare Twomey.

She placed the last bowl of her newly commissioned installation in position at last Wednesday''s media day to herald the gallery's August 1 re-opening after its £8 million redevelopment over the past two and a half years.

Twomey's work, Manifest: 10,000 Hours stands at the epicentre of CoCA on the new mezzanine level that brings new light and brightness to the gallery now that it is open to its roof once more in the redevelopment's most significant transformation.

The installation is Claire's response to the transformed space, the ceramics collection and the dedication of the artists that produced them,together with the collectors that supported them and then generously gave their collections to York Museums Trust: the likes of Dean Eric Milner-White, Bill Ismay and Anthony Shaw.

"I am thrilled to be given the opportunity to work with such a personally formed and rich collection," she said. "Making this work has built a dialogue around the roles of the collector, objects and the communities that appreciate them. You think of the incredible dedication and intensity of a collector like Bill Ismay, hardly being able to move in his house for all the objects he had gathered around him, so I wanted to represent that dedication.

"Then there are the makers; this baton of making gathered here. To be a maker is challenging, so hopefully this installation also represents the heroics of making or the passing on of skills, so that's why I wanted to work with others in the making and placing of these 10,000 objects."

York Press:

Installation artist Clare Twomey puts the finishing touch to Manifest: 10,000 Hours. Picture: Frank Dwyer

Communities of helpers in York, London and beyond have assisted in the production of the bowl, each bowl taking an hour to make, hence the installation's title of Manifest: 10,000 Hours.

"You can go back to Leonardo DaVinci, Andy Warhol, for having assistants in your work," said Claire. "We ran a workshop for 20 people for half a day, where at the beginning we would show how how we made the bowl, and you only had to show that once. Then people followed and we ended up going through the successes and failures of making 10,000 bowls.

"It's basic earthenware clay that I use, though we have a couple of hundred in porcelain too, all fired at different temperatures in different kilns, so that some emerged more blue in the high heat and white in the lower heat."

Explaining the significance of the figure of 10,000, Clare said: "There is a saying in China you must make 10,000 pieces to be considered a master, or you must work 10,000 hours to pass your apprenticeship, so here we have 10,000 pieces piled up."

Manifest: 10,000 Hours will be in situ for two years, but where will it go next? "We hope someone might fall in love with it and decide it to have it in a building in York, maybe a public building, because it would be a shame for something made in York for York not to stay in York," said Claire. "There were 150 people from York who helped to make it, so wouldn't it be great if it were not to disappear from here?"

Will a clumsy nudge or knock bring the whole edifice crashing to the floor? "There are a few at the bottom, at toddler height, that we have secured so that the bottom doesn't move," revealed Clare. "Once a bowl is inside another bowl, it's not going anywhere. It's called a mechanical lock, and that ensures it stays in place, and when you look upwards it all feels rather intense, doesn't it?!"