In the green city of Panevėžys, Lithuania, resides an expansive collection of contemporary ceramics. While the locals may not be entirely aware of the city’s international ceramic symposiums, Panevėžys stands as a distinguished hub for global ceramists. Within the Baltic region, only three principal events underscore the realm of ceramic symposia: the Kohila Symposium in Estonia, the Ceramics Laboratory in Latvia, and the Panevėžys International Ceramic Symposium in Lithuania. Consequently, the Lithuanian manifestation emerges as a preeminent fixture within the domain of artistic discourse.

Ceramic symposiums in the Baltic region

According to Lithuanian ceramist Eglė Einikytė-Narkevičienė, who has participated in all three symposiums, they are very different in their spirit. Kohila and Panevėžys international symposiums have deep traditions dating back more than 20 years. Meanwhile, Ceramics Laboratory has been running for over ten years. As E. Einikytė-Narkevičienė mentioned during the Kohila symposium, the main focus is on the process, not the result. This is where teamwork takes place during firing, and personal artists’ ambitions can be changed during this process. In the Ceramics Laboratory symposium, the idea is the sharing of ideas. Wide opportunities are provided for everyone to realize their creative ideas; however, the sizes of the works are limited. In Panevėžys, according to her, you can decide everything by yourself from A to Z. It is possible to control the process in terms of size, glazes, and quantity.

Kohila Symposium is an annual international wood-fired ceramics event held since 2001 in Kohila City, Estonia, and has already hosted 230 artists from 35 countries. The first anagama-type kiln was built in the Tohisoo Manor Park. Every year, organizers invite up to 11 artists for a three-week working process. After every symposium, there is an exhibition of creative works left to the collection of the event. Since 2021, there has been a biennale parallel program at the symposium involving the making and firing of a fire sculpture.

Ceramics Laboratory in Daugavpils, Latvia, has been held since 2013. It is also an annual event that brings together around 10-15 participants from abroad and from Latvia to support the local community. The organizers are the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Ceramics and the Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre (now the Rothko Museum). Artists are invited to abandon their usual principles, images, and forms of creative activity and to indulge in experiments, thus finding new ways and means of complementing their creative work in the future. For two weeks, they can experiment here with different firing techniques. Their works show the encoded cultural signs characteristic of different nations and cultures. This symposium culminates in exhibitions, master classes, workshops, lectures, and the firing of a fire sculpture. Since the inaugural symposium, over 100 ceramists from 32 countries have participated.

The history of Panevėžys International Ceramic Symposium

More than three decades ago, in 1989, the first Panevėžys International Ceramic Symposium was organized on the initiative of young students and graduates of at-that-time Vilnius Art Institute (now Vilnius Academy of Arts), which was attended by 16 artists from various fields of art. The first international ceramics event in Panevėžys was very different from the current symposiums, but it was characterized by vigor, youthful energy, and intense creative mood.

The first steps towards the international ceramics symposium began in 1977 when a Vilnius Art Institute student, Alvydas Pakarklis, started working at the Panevėžys Glass Factory. His interest in the refractory stone mass used in the glass manufacturing industry led to the experiment with this material. The creative process was welcomed and supported by the management of the Glass Factory, especially the Director at that time, Stasys Stoškus. In 1983, students of the same art institute, led by Professor Juozas Adomonis (1932–2022), who also participated in the symposium in 1999, came to the factory for creative practice. Since 1984, creative seminars of Lithuanian ceramic artists have been organized here. The artists always used a high-combustion gas kiln to fire the works at 1380°C. The exceptional size of the kiln (height – 1.80 m, area – 12 m², volume – 20 m3) allowed the creation of works of impressive scale, which later became the hallmark of the collection and the symposium itself.

At the very end of the 1990s, students of Vilnius Art Institute Tomas Daunora, Arūnas Rutkus, and the graduate Rimantas Skuodis (1951–2015) started organizing the first international symposium. They invited Philip Cornelius from the United States of America (1934–2015), the Lithuanian-born American Rimas VisGirda, and the Hungarian Katalin Högye. Together with them, a group of Lithuanians took part here: Romualdas Aleliūnas (1960–2016), Valdas Aničas, Vilija Balčiūnienė, Eugenijus Čibinskas, Nerutė Čiukšienė, Alfridas Pajuodis, Egidijus Radvenskas, Aldona Skudraitė, Gintautas Šveikauskas and Vytautas Tallat- Kelpša. A number of other Panevėžys artists also regularly performed in workshops, although they have not been considered official participants. The creative process took place at the Children’s Art School (on the premises of the former Chapel), the firing took place at the Glass Factory, and the exhibition of the created works was opened at Panevėžys Drama Theater (now Juozas Miltinis Drama Theatre). The first symposium was experimental in nature and laid a strong foundation for the creative process in the future.

When the City Council of Panevėžys established the Art Gallery in 1990, it was responsible for organizing these events. Until 2016, the Director of the Gallery at that time, Jolanta Lebednykienė, has been taking care of organizing the symposiums. Thanks to her efforts, 20 symposiums have been held. Then, symposiums lasted for almost five weeks. Now, the time of the event is a bit more than three weeks.

Chamotte clay used in the creative process is often called “Panevėžys stone mass” by art critics (the stone mass is indeed transported from Ukraine), which shows this event’s importance and position. In more than three decades, 24 symposiums have already taken place. Until 2002, symposiums were held annually at the Glass Factory; since 2004 – every second year, and since 2006 – at a Ceramics Company, “Midenė.” This company produces high-quality artistic ceramics for indoor and outdoor spaces and now has the biggest gas kiln in Lithuania, which is 1.50 m high, with an area of 4,5 m2 and a volume of 6,75 m3. “Midenė” art studios have a lot of working space. Here, participants of the symposiums can work in groups of two or three people (now, about 7-8 artists participate in one symposium). They can also use smaller electric kilns at their own expense. Every participant gets ~150 kg of clay; later, they can use glazes and engobes mixed by “Midenė” or their own glazes and other decor elements.

The fact is that 186 artists from 37 countries took part in these symposiums. The collection now consists of almost 700 works and compositions. This type of large-scale collection of stoneware contemporary ceramics is the only one in the Eastern European region. Currently, in Lithuania, it is the only permanent exposition of contemporary ceramics in the country.

Highlights of the 24th Symposium

In 2023, as many as eight ceramicists from Lithuania, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Poland, Ukraine, Taiwan, and South Korea participated in the 24th symposium. There was no lack of either happy discoveries or bitter disappointments in the creative process. As always, the ambitions of the artists are fulfilled or cut short by one of the main co-authors, the fire, whose grace depends on the happy or disappointing results that await the participants and visitors of the exhibition.

The works of each year’s symposium seem to be divided into several groups, united and separated by ideas and forms, because participants are not asked to work on specific topics. This year was no exception. The created works can be grouped into natural shapes and architectural and structural forms. The works of some authors talk about the intermingling of these two groups; for example, the works of Dmitrij Buławka-Fankidejski, the Polish (b. 1988), suggest a constant change and dependence on each other. The forms he creates are somewhere between a natural and a specially designed shape. The author investigates connections between visible and invisible phenomena that form nature and transfers them into his sculptures. Works of Dmitrij are not finite because they are created so that they can constantly change, grow, and live on, no longer depending on the artist’s decisions, simply under the influence of nature. The artist is originally a sculptor, so sculpting methods shape his works. He uses forms made from foam; clay is put in there, and then the foam is removed. This kind of method lets the artist create big, solid forms. Also, he uses natural, bright colors to enhance the impression of nature. As very aptly noticed by Lithuanian art critic and historian Lijana Šatavičiūtė-Natalevičienė, his works are not inseparable from technological performance and emphasis on content. By this outlook, D. Buławka-Fankidejski is a real modernist.

The creation of Agnė Šemberaitė, the Lithuanian (b. 1972) is multi-layered. Narrative and plot are essential in her works. As in all of the ceramic artist’s work, the work created during the symposium is a mixture of the real and the fictional, the real and the surreal. The author sculpted the deity in the form of a caterpillar – full, calm, all-seeing, and somewhat repulsive, but at the same time inspiring confidence. What remains unclear is whether the metamorphosis will end in a fully human shape or whether the insect origin will finally swallow up any remaining humanness. The artist obtained a master‘s degree in ceramics in 1998 at the Vilnius Academy of Arts; now, she is the chairman of the Vilnius Ceramics Section of the Lithuanian Artists’ Association. In 2022, she won the Gold Prize (in the international category) at the Latvia Ceramics Biennale “Martinsons Award 2021” at the Mark Rothko Art Center in Daugavpils, Latvia.

In her work, Maryna Handysh, the Ukrainian artist (b. 1989), explores the process from the emergence of subconscious images to their transformations when a material shape is born. During the 24th symposium, Maryna created several large sculptures – unfolding flowers, symbolizing the hope that emerges from the depths of a person. The powerful palm not only holds the blossoms but also serves as a safe haven. Usually, she engages in artistic practices of an experimental nature, combining different materials and technologies in her work.

Plant motifs also appear in the works of Viviane Diehl, the Brazilian, born in 1964. She continues her “Forests” series with a tall group of burnt trees. This series promotes aesthetic and, at the same time, symbolic experience, reflections on the relationship between man and nature, and environment and everyday challenges in the modern world. Just as forests are constantly burning, our souls smolder in times of global burnout. Viviane is an artist, art and culture coordinator, lecturer, and researcher who is a frequent guest at various ceramics symposiums. The artist delves into the challenges of the environment and everyday life in the modern world and the interrelationships between ancient and contemporary cultures.

Sunbin Lim, the South Korean representative (b. 1981), also looks for inspiration in specific decay processes. The motifs of his works come from old ruins (old architecture – human origin) and nature that is constantly changing and simultaneously dying (natural origin). Observing the structures, inner spaces, and surface textures of these formations, Sunbin Lim discovers imperfect beauty. Using these ideas, he also creates objects affected by the erosion of time. Sunbin finished his ceramic studies in South Korea and Germany as well. He has won significant awards, including the first prize at the “Cluj Ceramics Biennale” in Romania in 2019 and others.

Wen-Hsi Harman, the Taiwanese artist (b. 1984) living in the United Kingdom, also looks for connections between the two poles. She explores cross-cultural identity. Being in an intermediate state between two cultures gives her the basis to examine such a state when it seems completely independent from one community or the other. Studies of ceramics and art history (she earned a Ph.D. in philosophy) allow her to delve deeper into the study of ceramics. The author tries to reveal her identity using the image of the Formosan Himalayan bear (an endangered species). His V-shaped white collar evokes the victory symbol popular in Western culture. The ceramicist also decorates the surface of the work with small flakes that symbolize fingerprints – signs of uniqueness and exclusivity. Martin Harman, his husband (b. 1986), is far from figurative representation. He bases his work on precise geometric forms, which he modifies and creates new structures. Interestingly, his inspirations are natural architectural monuments, such as Stonehenge. The author is close to a small scale, so even during the symposium, he did not stray too far from his usual size, but the color range changed significantly. From brightly colored solutions, he moved to a relatively moderate color of earth tones. It is no secret that such decisions are dictated by high-firing technology.

Geometric forms and architectural structures are important to Rokas Janušonis, the Lithuanian artist born in 1997. The young artist, who has just completed his master’s studies in ceramics at Vilnius Academy of Arts, looks at clay as a universal material and another tool for expressing an idea, rejecting the craft and functionality typically associated with ceramics. Rokas connects the ceramic volume with the graphic line and explores their interaction. He also used this model for his work at Panevėžys Symposium. The artist actively participates both in the exhibition field and in various competitions of young artists.

The tradition of Panevėžys International Ceramic Symposiums is significant in many aspects. The beginning of the event was a unique opportunity for Lithuanian ceramic artists to become acquainted with the traditions and attitudes of other countries. Now, we can assert that these symposiums have entered the history of Lithuanian art. They formed the creative personality of many ceramic artists, provided knowledge and opportunities, and encouraged improvement. The main goal of the symposium is to unite artists to share ideas. The results are always gratifying in any case, whether they are exactly as expected, unpredictable but positive, or not as expected. However, participants leave not only new works in the collection of the Art Gallery but also memorable experiences and impressions in the participants’ memories.

Aurelija Seilienė is a Lithuanian art critic and curator working in visual arts, mainly ceramics. She earned her Master’s in History and Theory of Arts from the Vilnius Academy of Arts. Seilienė published numerous articles in the Lithuanian cultural press, compiled catalogs about visual arts and ceramics, and wrote introductory articles. She also worked as an expert in various exhibition selection commissions and project financing programs.

Captions

• 24th Panevėžys International Ceramic Symposium exhibition fragment, 2023. Photo by Vilija Visockienė.
• Kohila Ceramic Symposium. Photo by Annika Haas.
• Working process at Ceramics Laboratory. Photo by Pavels Terentjevs.
• Ceramics Laboratory exhibition fragment. Photo by Pavels Terentjevs.
• Participants and organizers of 12th Panevėžys International Ceramic Symposium in the kiln at Glass factory. 2000. Photo by Sergejus Kašinas.
• The kiln at Glass factory. 1998. Photo by Jolanta Lebednykienė.
• Participants of 24th Panevėžys International Ceramic Symposium in front of the kiln at „Midenė“. From left to the right: Sunbin Lim, Viviane Diehl, Agnė Šemberaitė, Dmitrij Buławka-Fankidejski, Maryna Handysh, Rokas Janušonis, Wen-Hsi Harman, Martin Harman. Photo by Gediminas Kartanas.
• Working process at 24th Panevėžys International Ceramic Symposium. Photo by Gediminas Kartanas.
• Working process at 24th Panevėžys International Ceramic Symposium. Photo by Gediminas Kartanas.
• Dmitrij Buławka-Fankidejski. „Phenomenon“. 2023, stoneware, glaze, 70x110x35 cm. Photo by Marius Rudžianskas.
• Agnė Šemberaitė. „Receiver“. 2023, stoneware, porcelain, glaze, underglaze paint, 84x60x53 cm. Photo by Marius Rudžianskas.
• Maryna Handysh. „Pulsation“. 2023, stoneware, glaze, 80x53x50 cm, 85x50x50 cm. Photo by Marius Rudžianskas.
• Viviane Diehl. „Burnout“. 2023, stoneware, engobes, 135x70x70 cm. Photo by Marius Rudžianskas.
• Sunbin Lim. „Wardrobe“. 2023, stoneware, glazes, 50x37x21 cm. Photo by Marius Rudžianskas.
• Wen-Hsi Harman. „Love & Peace“. 2023, stoneware, porcelain, glazes, 31x38x20, 34x32x16 cm. Photo by Marius Rudžianskas.
• Martin Harman. „Bubbles“. 2023, stoneware, glazes, 50x27x25 cm. Photo by Marius Rudžianskas.
• Rokas Janušonis. „Set Pnvz“. 2023, stoneware, engobes, glaze, h 140 ø26, h 111x83x31, h 36x44x48, h 24x27x16. Photo by Marius Rudžianskas.

Australia’s cities are vibrant and modern, and the country’s overwhelmingly urban population is diverse and hip. Yet this antipodal island’s geographic remoteness feels almost palpable – hence its nickname, The Land Down Under. Its vast, largely uninhabited interior feels omnipresent, host to a unique ecosystem that has forged a distinctive Australian spirit highly attuned to the natural environment and the inherent threats posed by climate change. These sensibilities were evident in the work of the four ceramicists whose exhibitions I had the pleasure of viewing during my brief stay in Melbourne.

Collectively, their works shared a cerebral, intentional purpose. Individually, each artist explored a different facet of the complex relationship between maker and his or her environment. To stay engaged with the climate emergency ‘without getting stuck in despair or outrage’ Canadian-born artist Claire Ellis aims to make a political impact by creating work that arouses the viewer’s curiosity.

The vessels in her Craft Victoria exhibition Triple Cooked take on the fossil fuel crisis by mimicking the scarred earth resulting from Australia’s robust mining industry. The three sentinel vessels are coil-built from clay made of reclaimed landscaping basalt which Ellis sources from quarry off-cuts and stonemasons. The same rock is broken into pieces, tumbled, and then fitted into hand-molded crevices that pockmark the surface of each vessel. Surprisingly, these bold, tactile vessels are fired in a single firing.

While working as a chef at a critically acclaimed restaurant in Melbourne, Ellis began transitioning from what went on the plate to the plate itself, creating tableware for the tasting menu in a makeshift ceramic studio within the restaurant. This shift was prompted by a need to step away from the stresses of working in the high-octane food industry. Ceramics allowed her “to slow down while still being creative and working with my hands.” In clay, she has not only found catharsis, but an outlet for her environmental activism where her experience in the kitchen has held her in good stead. “My chef experience has taught me that things take a lot of tweaking and quite a few tries before they are just right.”

Ellis goes to great lengths to keep materials out of the landfill. Nothing goes to waste – even the plastic bags that clay comes in are washed and melded and turned into beautiful onyx-like lids for her ceramic containers. Her commitment to sustainability also extends to her tableware collection which incorporates recycled materials such as eggshells and glass.

Ellis has completed a number of artist residencies and her work has been exhibited in Paris and Milan. With several awards under her belt, she was a guest speaker at The Australian Ceramics Triennale in 2022. The artist is driven to bringing awareness to the impact of traditional industrial practices on our planet. She feels a sense of personal responsibility towards her adopted country – evident in the sentiment expressed on her website’s footnote:

I acknowledge the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people of the Kulin Nation, the traditional owners of the land on which I work and I also acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands across the world where materials and knowledge in my practice originate. I recognize their continuous connection to Country and I pay my respects to their Elders past and present.

Individual acknowledgements recognizing the country’s original inhabitants have become common practice in Australia. As a nation, Australia is starting to come to terms with its colonial history; appreciation of First Nations’ connection to country is becoming more widespread. With her training as an arts conservator, artist Georgia Harvey has insights into how cultural objects carry the stories and ideas of their makers and she recognizes her responsibility “to preserve cultural artifacts so as to learn from the past and better understand the present.” The self-taught maker has developed her own unique style, drawing from her experiences working with cultural collections, in particular antiquities as well as her earlier studies in painting.

Since discovering her love of ceramics, Harvey has built a flourishing practice in her backyard studio, where she says she makes ‘new discoveries every day.’ The artist’s remarkably varied yet cohesive solo show Lion-ish–also at Craft Victoria–is composed of twenty-three ceramic iterations of the lion as polysemous icon. Harvey is known for exhibitions that demonstrate a convergence of styles. Viewing the totality of Harvey’s idiosyncratic lion sculptures is like taking a kaleidoscopic tour of the ancient world seen through a modern lens.

The gallery describes her show as “a playful celebration of this diversity of perspectives and realities.” Harvey describes her pieces as ‘ancientesque’, animistic, and playful but her profound knowledge of cultural and historical context is evident throughout the exhibit. The artist acknowledges that her distinct, imperfect style walks the line between ‘not too cute and not too hideous but perhaps inhabiting a slightly unsettling space in between.’

Harvey finds inspiration everywhere – medieval illuminations, archaic ceremonial vessels, sentinel statuary, heraldry, kitsch figurines. She is drawn to animal forms and honed in on the king of the jungle for her Lion-ish exhibit, fascinated by the way in which different cultures (some of which had never laid eyes on an actual lion) purloined this creature to represent often disparate symbolic significance. She references Plato’s Allegory of the Cave which questions the philosophical nature of Truth and its subjective interpretations.

Harvey is well-traveled and lived for several years in the UAE. Her lion series was inspired by multiple influences and while she plays with ideas of origin, she is conscious of poaching too literally from other cultures. Her sculptures materialize “through the prism of her hands,” each emerging as a unique character flavored with opaque cultural references and timeless beauty. During the creative process, Harvey allows herself to get lost, trusting the clay to lead her down the right path. “It’s all about the process for me,” says the artist. “I’m never too distraught when things don’t work out – I see it as an opportunity to make something else!” Harvey even imbues bottle forms with personality and believes that a successful result is one that breathes ‘a spark of life’ into her creations.

The collaborative ceramics exhibition by artists Kate Jones and Parker Lev Dupain at Oigall Projects was spread out over the gallery’s three rooms. Entitled Cubby, the exhibition centered around the concept of the container as a space that “may offer solace to one and unease to another…eliciting a sense of exploration and imagination.”

My first impression upon entering the primary gallery space housing Jones’ expressive, oversized forms was that of walking through the Australian ‘bush’, the term used to describe the Australian countryside. The hand built vertical forms, adorned with bold, painterly brushstrokes, were reminiscent of Australia’s iconic eucalyptus trees – the coloring, the rough texture, the sheer solidity of a stand of trees. There is a timelessness to Jones’ sculptural constructions, built to last a lifetime. A few of the forms were decorated with mythical imagery that evoked early Aboriginal bark paintings. Jones uses coil and slab techniques, liberally decorating her surfaces with stains, colored clays, oxides, terra sigilata and glazes, and has recently begun using staples to enhance and further draw attention to cracks.

As both the current President of The Australian Ceramics Association and Director of Australian Ceramics Triennale, Kate Jones is not only actively engaged with the Australian ceramic community but influential in forging its path and identity. In addition to her creative output, Jones engages in research, writing, curating, and teaching. She thinks deeply about all aspects of ceramics, probing the art of creation as intensely as delving into the underlying motivations behind collecting. Her articles for The Journal of Australian Ceramics provide insight into Jones’ work ethic and purpose. “I want art to stop time, to disrupt context. To take me somewhere else, or to bring me home. Art’s objects are messengers bringing us news from nowhere, missives from other ways of thinking or being. They have a capacity to convey meaning which language cannot quite grasp, and thus they expand our range of expression. As potters, we are fortunate to work in a field where the possibilities for our objects to touch others are so direct and so expansive.”

The multi-media installation devised by Jones together with her studio partner, visual artist Parker Lev Dupain, included an olfactory element in the form of a scent designed specifically for the exhibition. Parker’s ceramic oeuvre includes thrown tableware that draws on the history of ceramics in domestic contexts and experimental sculptural forms that push the limits of the material.

The third gallery space at Oigall Projects presented a collaborative installation by Jones and Dupain built upon a bed of handmade porcelain bricks of varying shapes and sizes. Upon this bleached expanse, the artists placed random figurines and small ceramic knickknacks at sparse intervals. The overall impression was once again evocative of Australia’s drought-parched interior, a feeling further enhanced by various emaciated bestial figures.

The three exhibitions revealed a refreshing Australian flavor that addressed global issues while demonstrating cutting edge practice and experimentation in the field of contemporary ceramics. Each artist expressed their global and personal concerns through careful consideration for both materiality and concept. Though the works diverged widely in technique and aesthetics, the narrative thread that defined all three shows was the dominant role that political and social principles are playing in contemporary ceramics. Only by confronting burning issues can we bring people into the debate.

Lilianne Milgrom is an artist, ceramicist, freelance writer and published author. She travels widely and loves discovering new artists. You can see her artwork on www.liliannemilgrom.com and her writings on www.liliannemilgromauthor.com. You can also find her on Instagram @liliannemilgrom

Captions

• image 1. MOTHEROCK, Claire Ellis, 2023, sink sludge, recycled glass, rock by-products, photography by Lillie Thompson
• image 2. O Vessel SLATE, Claire Ellis, 2023, sink sludge, recycled glass, slate by-products, 18x18x7cm, photography by Lillie Thompson
• image 3. ‘Climate crisis costing $16m an hour in extreme weather damage, study estimates’, Claire Ellis, 2023, recycled earthenware and second life basalt, 61 x 30cm, photography by Henry Trumble courtesy of Craft Victoria
• image 4. ‘Australian fossil fuel subsidies costing taxpayers $65 billion a year: IMF’, Claire Ellis, 2023, recycled earthenware and second life basalt, 66 x 26cm, photography by Henry Trumble courtesy of Craft Victoria
• image 5. ‘Australia needs climate trigger laws, conservation groups say after failed challenge to coalmines’, Claire Ellis, 2023, recycled earthenware and second life basalt, 63 x 35cm, photography by Henry Trumble courtesy of Craft Victoria
• image 6. Triple Cooked, Claire Ellis, 2023, recycled earthenware and second life basalt, photography by Henry Trumble courtesy of Craft Victoria
• image 7. ‘Climate crisis costing $16m an hour in extreme weather damage, study estimates’, Claire Ellis, 2023, recycled earthenware and second life basalt, 61 x 30cm, photography by Henry Trumble courtesy of Craft Victoria
• image 8. Solace n15, Claire Ellis, 2022, reclaim stoneware, recycled glass and clay bags, 10 x 17cm, photography by Annika Kafcaloudis
• image 9. Recycled plastic clay bags detail, Claire Ellis, 2022, photography by Annika Kafcaloudis
• image 10. Solace n15, Claire Ellis, 2022, reclaim stoneware, recycled glass and clay bags, 10 x 17cm, photography by Annika Kafcaloudis

Ceramic’s very nature as a material dictates the way we handle and interact with it, namely gently, cleanly, and never too roughly. When on view in galleries and museums, an additional sense of distance is created, often through the physical barrier of a glass case, a marked-off region beyond which it is alright to stand and look, or even just through a security guard’s dirty look as you approach a piece. An ironic relationship is created with ceramics – before firing, when it was still clay, it was a material that invited you to touch it, knead it, and engage with it in a process of constant forming and reforming. As a rigid, unmalleable, and impermeable material, the object’s worth depends on its form or its ability to fulfill its intended purpose. It maintains that worth as long as it retains its form, but when reduced to shards, it becomes an object to be discarded, as it can no longer serve its purpose, and the shards have no purpose to begin with. We have all internalized these concepts, which we constructed as a society through our widespread interaction with ceramics in the form of, for instance, tea sets and other table accoutrement, to the extent that, as artists, we often feel constrained and, by habit, approach clay and ceramics as primary materials with certain rules about their handling. Seeking seemingly silly connections and challenging our own perception of a focus material is thus likely one of the only ways to transcend our conditioned, perhaps even ignorant understanding of clay and ceramics.

The inherently contradictory epithet “kinetic ceramics” invites a range of new perspectives on the wealth of characteristics that clay and ceramics offer as media. If you follow the material’s development from its initial, hard state, as a block of solid clay that can be cut, crushed, or mixed with water until it becomes a thick, sticky, fluid mixture, which upon contact with an absorbent surface transforms into a malleable mass whose texture can range from rough to slippery. That mass can then accept imprints, it can be guided and molded, it can be added to, and it can be halved.

Upon drying, this mass, which has been in constant flux so far, finally receives a hard, though fragile form. Although the drying and firing processes give the impression that the medium has now undergone an irreversible thermal process that has locked them in their pose, even that is not the ultima thule we might think: unseen to our eyes, the clay is still mutable. The edges of its clay particles melt and merge. A vitrified bond forms between the particles, rendering the object solid and impermeable. And even then, there’s still no end to the material’s constant metamorphosis. Even after firing, ceramics are in motion. The glaze cracks—a gradual, long-term process that, even if microscopic in small intervals, nonetheless adds up to a physical change in the object. A more extreme example is found in dunting, the way ceramic shards crumble due to a mistake in the firing process, either from uneven heat distribution in the furnace or from cooling off too quickly. The resulting cracks, which at first are perhaps merely a hair’s width, eventually cause the object to collapse, even if it was never used or handled. And an object’s collapse, its fragmentation and disintegration, means a return to the earth. The tribes of Malawi, for instance, fire their earthenware to the point where it’s hard enough to use but still soft enough to be remodeled and recycled into a new form. All these things considered, it’s safe to say that the flow of motion and life through and within clay and ceramics is never interrupted.

The many techniques that can be applied to the material through its various states and stages allow for a gamut of artistic approaches and forms of expression that only attest to the clay’s generosity as a medium to work with. When we free our understanding and handling of the material from the shackles of convention, we can be swept away in their ensuing current, recognizing their true nature, which becomes alpha and omega in the process of creation. At this point, the material itself becomes a translator or interpreter of a concept, an idea, independent of any historical milieu or artistic classification. The dialog between the kinetic and the ceramic becomes a closed loop of transforming characteristics in a broader context, and the potential for expression extends to the domains of performance, multimedia, concept art, and interdisciplinary projects.

The British Ceramics Biennial (from now on BCB), with its wonderfully curated exhibitions, showcases the most cutting-edge concepts and out-of-the-box projects, which playfully toy with how we perceive materials, encouraging others towards critical contemplation about the social, climatic, and otherwise global changes of the modern era. I am specifically highlighting BCB here as one of the world’s best and most influential international exhibitions, one that sets the bar and shows the way forward, always displaying the most progressive intersection of clay and ceramics with modern art. Here, I would like to highlight the artists Caroline Tattersall, Phoebe Cummings, and Juree Kim, whose way with clay is anything but conventional. They subject clay to many states and conditions, triggering changes in the material itself and thus in its ultimate form. Their act of transformation could be characterized as a performance of the material itself as a living entity. Caroline Tattersall’s work Spode Towers takes old molds of jugs from the industrial ceramics manufacturer Spode and casts porcelain with them. She then stacks the result into a mighty tower, filling the highest jug with water, which then seeps through the pores of the poorly connected forms until they are destroyed. This work is intimately related to the collapse of the domestically and globally influential Spode factory and, in the broadest sense, to the consequences wrought by the closure of its factories – a rise in unemployment, a loss of tradition, and a fracture in the continuous dissemination of knowledge to a new generation.

Juree Kim depicts collapse even more poignantly, setting a row of carefully sculpted houses on a wet surface. In her piece Place and Practices (2017), the water gradually dissolves the bottoms of the sculptures, leading to their slow but inevitable disintegration. Juree Kim’s work explores social and natural environments, focusing on her own cultural identity.

On the other hand, Phoebe Cummings creates statement pieces that funnel clay into its own separate ecosystem, where it can be self-sufficient and independent of external influence. This effect is achieved by sealing off rooms, as in the case of her work After the Death of the Bear (2013), where tropical details are emphasized. The water that evaporates from the surface returns to the clay as dewy droplets of condensation. The process continues indefinitely, a timelessness accented by the blurred, foggy vantage point through the wall of polyvinyl film.

Indeed, the British Isles are blazing the trail in the modern development of new techniques and approaches to clay and ceramics. Other artists like William Cobbing and Keith Harrison opt for more direct, performative acts. A material becomes kinetic as the direct result of a protagonist’s impulse, of an intentional, conscious action. William Cobbing produces clay masks or heads that assume the role of vessel for the action that will ensue from an actor’s impulse. Whether through cutting, manipulation, folding, writing, or deletion, the clay head becomes a chimeral entity, while the identity of the action’s driver remains anonymous. Works like The Kiss (2017) also make historical reference to the work of Constantine Brancusi. Grotesque heads melded together, mounted atop a human form, with arms tenderly caressing the sticky, slippery surface of the clay, is a translation of the primal, archetypal conception of the power of the kiss that Brancusi referenced in his own series with the same name.

This direct, physical relationship is an even more prominent feature in the work of Alexandra Engelfriet, a Dutch artist whose creative process fluidly weaves between production and performance. Her work is that of dialog between two opposing forces or masses. Their relationship marks both parties equally, with the ultimate result in sculpture and room-sized works, as well as in graphic prints. Her work Skinned (2018) employs a constant influx of material to explore the very concept of space, along with its demarcations, and thus also with the borders of our own bodies. The performative endeavor results in body-shaped imprints on the gallery’s walls, which assume the very identity of said imprints. The coarse layer of clay left behind becomes an archive attesting to the changes the space underwent. Alexandra Engelfriet, who is viscerally and bodily connected to the material she works with, ironically and contradictorily keeps an extraordinary distance from it – her work is always about the effect of one material or one body on another.

Taking a completely different approach from Alexandra Engelfreit’s, Marisa Finos understands clay and other materials as an extension of the body. It’s not about a dialog and a mutual enterprise of two masses but the harmonized, synchronized, and supremely conscious construction of the new form that the material must assume. The artist bestows upon clay the role of constructing the invisible but personal boundaries of private space. Her inspiration is drawn from an understanding of death and dying in modern culture. The shaped sarcophagi (Vessel, 2014) and domes (Vessel III, (With Harriotte), 2015 ) that she created manifest a safe space for conducting rituals related to the concepts of afterlife, ancient and modern funerary practices, funerary structures, mourning rites, and the corpse’s preservation and ultimate decay.

Wrangling with the beauty standards that society erects as the measure of a woman’s worth is the central issue of Teri Frame’s work, which becomes a performance through the creative process. The central issue of her work explores the construction of social hierarchies, particularly those of race, gender, aging, and ability. The sub-component within her work is researching human conceptions of beauty and their inextricable links to bodily hierarchies. Much like Cobbing, she too employs the prop of a clay mask, one that highlights certain attributes that Frame harnesses for her performance. Sitting before a mirror, she applies ever newer layers to her clay mask, constantly changing her appearance in the process. From instance to instance, her performative act can range from the broadly satyrical to the profoundly personal. The assumed forms tease various viewpoints on beauty standards and the associated problems, using objects that Western society understands and values as products that help achieve the norms we’ve set.

In its malleable state, clay is the perfect material for creating constantly changing depictions, a property so brilliantly put to good use in the animated pieces of the legendary Jan Švankmajer, who, in works such as Darkness, Light, Darkness (1989) and Factual Conversation (Dimensions of Dialogue) (1982) humorously models clay through the construction of a protagonist. We don’t often see clay as the star of such animated endeavors, as something more like play-dough is usually used, as it doesn’t dry out during manipulation. A constantly drying material undoubtedly complicates production processes that require smooth, clean, and consistent implementation, so it is much more appropriate to use in a different context.

Danijela Pivašević Tenner uses clay’s drying process as one of her primary means of expression, which facilitates her staging of sustainably oriented artistic practices in her creative process. Pouring liquid clay over everyday objects robs them of their primary function and questions the patterns by which objects are identified. At the same time, through the same act, she addresses the paradigm of understanding the identity of ceramics. Traditionally speaking, ceramics can only apply to something that has undergone firing. Pivašević Tenner, an artist with a major in fine arts in ceramics, transcends all traditional reference frames and boundaries in this regard. By doing so, she opens up the question of her own identity. This break from tradition is embodied by the cracks in the surfaces of the everyday objects that make up the entire piece.

Andy Goldsworthy is another artist who abandons the material to natural processes, both in natural settings (like with his work Clay Dome, 2012) and in galleries (such as for Clay Wall, 2007). The clay, along with all the other materials comprising a given work, is imprinted upon the space like a memory and is then left to be transformed by the new environment. Goldsworthy created the Clay Dome to forge the most intimate possible relationship with clay to truly understand its essence. The dome provided a meditative sanctuary, and the clay was left to the natural drying process.

The idea of constructing architectural objects out of clay is taken to another level by Nina Hole, whose work is an agile, multifaceted amalgamation of a range of artistic domains. The exhibited object undergoes a hybrid transition between something utilitarian (such as a stove) and something artistic (a statue), and the process in a specific location alongside the construction of a narrative is paramount to the performative nature of her work. Nina Hole attributes the clay object, usually a form of dwelling, to the role of a furnace. The whole structure of her work is subordinate to the directive that the resulting work plays both roles. This process is her guide from the foundation upwards to the ultimate construction of an insulating shell that allows a high temperature to be reached, thus changing the material. The shell is removed at the height of firing. We are, therefore, subject to a material that is in constant flux at the microscopic level.

Other artists have also identified the potential role that thermal treatment plays in transforming the medium’s status. The change in clay’s form as a product of thermal processing is where Christina Schou Christensen’s exploration begins, as her sculptures are a live testament to how the material moves during firing. Her technical expertise on various clays’ chemical properties, including their melting points and what sorts of clay mixtures can be made to manipulate those melting points, stretches the limits on what the material is capable of, and Christensen seeks out these extremes and playfully teases the shape of the vertical form. Christina Schou Christensen exploits how the material changes and becomes deformed in constructing her artwork’s very bases and fundaments. The technical knowledge that often justifies the characterization of ceramics as more trade than art is thus an inextricable part of the deeper process that provides the conceptual source of the whole. Thus, The cast’s structure becomes a frozen testament to the construction of the whole work and of the ensuing processes.

Just as the very structure of the constructed object allows Nina Hole to change an object’s identity, Cecil Kemperink similarly approaches the medium, molding her sculptures in the form of interconnected rings, allowing the viewer to constantly change the sculpture as we handle it, adding a new form to it. The work truly comes to life in her performative interactions with it. What was previously a static chain becomes an active vessel for sound. The sound released during motion becomes inextricable from the material itself.

The wealth of varying practices and approaches that are found abroad are mirrored in Slovenian undertakings. A project at the Layer House in Kranj, πr squared, is an exhibition of contemporary kinetic ceramics, biennially showcasing the creative endeavors of established artists and budding talents, all of whom take an unexpected approach to handling the material. Their innovative projects gave Slovenian creation a welcome respite from the traditional depictions of ceramics, making viewers ride a wave of multisensory discovery. Špela Šedivy’s work Within Earshot (2023) produced a set of musical vessels that spin like dreidels, crumbling the traditional walls that confine the artistic relationship between viewer and viewed. Found shards in Louise Winter’s work hang vibrating in timelessness. That which seems a moment frozen in time at first glance transforms into clanging fragments that yearn to free themselves of their static imprisonment. Brigita Gantar and Meta Mramor designed their room-sized work Raz-bitje (2023) by placing visitors in the role of the piece’s co-creators. Destruction of the hanging clay orbs ensues as the result of walking through them, along with the crumbling of the clay bricks under your feet as you view the exhibit, and the piece reaches its climax with Meta Mramor’s performance, as she slices into a glass cast of her own body in order to topicalize body dysmorphia. Veronika Lah installs her dried clay structures outside and abandons them to the elements. Rain washes away layers of clay, which fall as droplets back to the earth in a return to that whence we all originate. In her piece, Third Report on Creation (2021), Lana Pastirk alludes to Jan Švankmajer. Impressions of faces set on a printing press, with parts of faces painstakingly arranged in the perfect spot, forget an intimate space where immortality can be sought by the artist. The human narcissistic mindset, along with the values and standards of modern society, form the central motif in Pastirk’s work. Nataša Ilec Kralj’s piece Inalienabilis (2021) marks an autobiographical contemplation on the concept of desire. Kamnik Saddle, a mountain pass in the Alps, constitutes the object-cause-desire relationship for the artist’s work. Deconstructing that desire is manifested in the repetitive casts of Kamnik Saddle, in which the artist manipulates the material such that each new iteration of casting causes the ultimate form to disintegrate into ruin. Ana Ščuka’s piece Cycle Ž (2021) sees liquid clay pumped in motion through PVC pipes that are bent in the shape of a microscopic clay particle. The driving force of life is the perfect analogy for the primary essence of clay, perhaps even that which Andy Goldsworthy seeks.

Before leaving, we should also highlight the exhibition cave_me (2021), a collaborative project between Timotej Rosc, Satya Pene, Ajda Rep, and Hana Tavčar. The Mahlerce Gallery houses the work, for which they combined textiles and clay to create a room-sized piece, an isolated space whose volume and material composition were set just so for the viewer to lose their orientation. The space is claustrophobic, but the combination of selected materials simultaneously produces feelings of comfort and coziness.

Kristina Rutar is an artist born in 1989 in Slovenia. She completed her studies in ceramics at the Faculty of Education, University in Ljubljana, in 2013. She continued her post-graduate studies in interdisciplinary printmaking at the E. Geppert ASP in Wroclaw, Poland. She mainly works in sculpting and ceramics, questioning the traditions of the two mediums. She received numerous awards and acknowledgments, and her works can be found in public and private collections. She lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where she works as an assistant professor of ceramics at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design.

Captions

• Caroline Tattersall, Spode towers, unfired bone china (Spode moulds), 2011. Photo credit: Darren Washington
• Alexandra Engelfriet, Skinned, installation and performance, 2018. Photo credit: Liedeke Kruk
• Marisa Finos, Vessel, 4-Day Durational Performance, Clay, Mirror, 2014. Photo Credit: Artist
  Marisa Finos, Vessel III (with Harriotte), 5-Day Durational Performance, Clay, Sound, 2015. Photo Credit: Jenny Calivas
• Teri Frame, Pre-human, Pos-human, Inhuman, Act I: Simians. Video Still, 2011
  Teri Frame, Pre-human, Pos-human, Inhuman, Act III: Hybrids. Video Still, 2011
  Teri Frame, Pre-human, Pos-human, Inhuman, Act VI: Post-humans. Video Still, 2011
• Danijela Pivašević Tenner, Do you know what’s behind, unfired clay and donated objects, 2018. Photo credit: Shine Bhola
  Danijela Pivašević Tenner, Disposable Life, Performance, unfired porcelain, video work, 2022. Photo credit: Anna Katharina Rowedder
• Cecil Kemperink, Big Rhythm. Photo Crefit: Marloes Coppes
• Christina Schou Christensen, Blue Legs, 30 x 30 x 40 cm, 2017. Photo credit: Dorthe Krogh
• Veronika Lah, Erosion, clay, steel wire, 2020/2021. Photo credit: Maša Pirc / Layerjeva hiša
• Ana Ščuka, Cycle Ž, pvc pipes, liquid clay, drive mechanism, 50 x 30 x 150 cm, 2021. Photo credit: Maša Pirc / Layerjeva hiša
• Lana Pastirk, Third Report on Creation, site-specific installation, plaster of paris, silicon, wax, hair, porcelain and stoneware, 2021. Photo credit: Maša Pirc / Layerjeva hiša
• Špela Šedivy, Within Earshot, terracotta and wood, 160 x 100 x 40 cm, 2021. Photo credit: Martin Peca
• Meta Mramor and Brigita Gantar, Raz-bitje, clay, photo, video, glass, 2023. Photo credit: Maša Pirc / Layerjeva hiša
• Louise Winter. Withouth title, ceramic roof tiles, string, site-specific installation, 2023. Photo credit: Maša Pirc / Layerjeva hiša
• Nataša Ilec Kralj, Inalienabilis, stoneware, site-specific installation, 2021. Photo credit: Davor Kralj

For some forty years, potter, theorist, historian, and educator Paul Mathieu has been a powerful voice in ceramics discourse. Through his teaching, writing, lectures, exhibitions—and, now, YouTube videos—Mathieu has consistently challenged conventional models for thinking about craft, particularly ceramics. His travels have taken him to China, where he participated in numerous residencies; Europe, where he now lives part-time; the US, Australia, and elsewhere. His breadth of knowledge and familiarity with historical and contemporary ceramics inform his teaching and writing, which he generously makes available on his website.

The text Ceramics! The Art of the Future? A History and a Theory consists of some 14 independent essays plus an introduction, addendum, bibliography, and glossary, all of which can be downloaded from Mathieu’s website. The essays are complex, detailed, and designed for those wishing to think more deeply about the individual topics. Recently, Mathieu reconfigured the essays into a series of PowerPoint videos and posted them on YouTube. Each video is approximately 45 minutes in length, narrated by the author, and illustrated with a large number of images. This format permits a wider audience to be addressed, as the option to look and listen will appeal to those interested in ceramics but perhaps not yet inclined towards a more profound study. Those wishing to pursue the ideas, artists, or issues further are encouraged to consult the related texts.

As with the texts, the videos are divided into an introduction and fourteen essays–seven esthetics and seven themes. The essays differ from more traditional histories in that they range across chronological periods, geographical locations, and cultures. Mathieu’s point in identifying and grouping work according to different esthetics is to demonstrate similarities across a diversity of ceramic objects and technologies. This approach is novel, and, while it tends to bracket work off from the social, economic, or technological context in which it is enmeshed, it creates continuities that reveal other aspects of interest.

The seven esthetics include Classical, Flux, Decoration, Narrative, Simulation, Industrial, and Material. Topics are approached from a conceptual perspective. For example, Classical looks at the constancy of certain forms across geography and time. The author discusses standard Greek pottery forms and their function as framing devices for their imagery. These forms continued to be used to convey specific meanings throughout time. Mathieu makes the point that form and image are activated by use; in sipping from a circular kylix, the level of the wine in the cup makes the central image appear to be floating. The classical esthetic is also found in Asia, where particular forms persist through millennia, and decorative modes such as blue and white patterns feature in Chinese, Japanese, and European designs, and in work by contemporary artists such as Paul Scott, who draws on the history of blue and white wares to make pointed political comments.

Flux considers the importance of glaze surfaces, tracing technological developments from the earliest alkaline glazes on Mesopotamian pots to self-glazing Egyptian paste, enamels, lustres, and atmospheric firing. Decoration examines abstraction and ornament, with the focus on surface being something unique to ceramics. Geometric patterns are examined in North American Pueblo wares as well as contemporary works by artists such as Elizabeth Fritsch, Jun Kaneko, and Greg Payce, who often activates his surfaces with contrasting stripes. Mathieu includes his own work, which often integrates figural forms with extensively decorated surfaces. Organic abstraction found in Islamic designs allows for repetition and infinite extension. Floral decoration brings the natural world into human environments to indicate the cycles of life, seasons, and fertility. Decoration also considers the use of plastic modelling as found from ancient Jomon pots to contemporary artists such as Matt Wedel.

Narrative examines images incorporated onto objects in a fusion of 2D and 3D form. Again, classical Greek pots demonstrate familiar narratives being used to animate traditional forms. Contemporary approaches to the use of narrative include works by Michael Frimkess, whose faux Greek forms address social issues, or Grayson Perry, who layers images relating to sexuality and identity on vessels. Contemporary artists make use of photography with transfer prints, as does Jeannie Mah, who explores a cinematic approach to narrative imagery spread across a number of related forms. This chapter includes many examples, often presented without additional comment, to illustrate the potential entailed by using narrative imagery.

Simulation examines clay’s capacity to assume an infinite variety of forms, textures, and colours, such that it can be made to resemble other materials—wood, metal, plastic—or objects. In sixteenth-century France, Bernard Palissy pioneered the use of plaster moulds to simulate animals, plants, and rocks, creating a manner of working that continues to be popular to this day. Yixing tea pots made from purple stoneware clay in China are often shaped to resemble familiar objects. Manufacturers such as Wedgwood created popular soup tureens in the shape of animals or vegetables, while contemporary artists create hyperreal objects that are almost indistinguishable from the real thing. Paper bags, shoes, handbags, and other everyday objects are frequently imitated in clay. As with more traditional ceramic objects, these simulated objects speak about the body, containment, ethnicity, and popular culture.

Industrial examines concepts of purity and perfection characteristic of industrial ceramics. The use of moulds on an industrial scale dates back to Mesopotamia, Rome, South America, and elsewhere, and continues to be popular with artists today. Mathieu examines early twentieth-century work by Michael Powolny, Otto Lindig, Eva Zeisel, and Canadian examples Céramique de Beauce and Sial, showing how the industrial esthetic has deep roots in consumer culture. He also looks at the use of 3D printers, digitally-printed decals, and other industrial processes that have currency with contemporary makers, and high-tech uses of ceramics for rocket tiles, ceramic knives, and filters.

The seven esthetics conclude with Material, which explores the materiality of clay and processes that condition the final object. Mathieu examines the use of wood-fire and ash glazes in Japan, where they feature in wares used in the tea ceremony. A number of artists work with coloured clays, using collage, neriage, and marbling techniques to produce unique surfaces. Artists such as Clare Twomey exploit extreme accumulation to produce installations with thousands of identical objects, while others, such as Walter McConnell, draw on qualities of unfired clay to produce installations that incorporate natural processes. Nina Hole and John Roloff create structures that are fired on site, combining performance with materiality to create impressive works.

The various esthetics identified by Mathieu are not exhaustive, but they create a compelling framework for organizing a bewildering variety of ceramic objects. The second half of the texts and videos focus on ways these objects are nested in human culture. These include Food, Shelter, Text, Figure, Hygiene, Sex, and Death. These videos present a vast number of interesting and possibly unfamiliar examples. Food addresses disposable clay yogurt cups used in Africa and India, propaganda wares from China and revolutionary Russia, and simulated food items. It also notes the use of domestic ceramics to make social or political statements, such as Julie Green’s series of Last Supper plates depicting meals chosen by condemned prisoners. Shelter explores bricks and tiles, with interesting examples of roof tiles, ceramic tiles in subway stations, Ulla Viotti’s brick structures, and Rory MacDonald’s ceramic “repairs.”

In Text, the early use of clay tablets to record cuneiform impressions is noted, as are the plates Romans used to track inventory in communal kilns. Islamic tiles make extensive use of calligraphy to convey spiritual truths in mosques, and numerous contemporary artists use text to make political and social statements. Mathieu also points to the use of paper imbued with porcelain, which, when fired, creates beautiful, delicate forms. Figure looks at ceramic depictions of human and animal forms such as the terra cotta tomb figures from Qin Dynasty China and Meissen figurines. It examines expressive works made by contemporary artists such as Justin Novak, who draws on his experience as a graphic designer to create figurines based on toys, which are at once playful and ominous. Hygiene focuses on the body and its functions, examining objects that are repulsive, practical, or beautiful, such as Ann Agee’s ceramic bathroom tiles produced at the Kohler Foundation in Wisconsin.

The final themes address two closely linked phenomena, Sex and Death. Eroticism in ceramics has a long history dating back to prehistoric fertility figures. Erotic themes were often depicted on Greek pots, while ceramic models of genitalia feature in many cultures. The Moche culture in Peru created pots depicting nearly every form of sexual activity, including sex with animals and birth. Sexuality is a popular theme in contemporary art as well. Death is closely linked with ceramics through the early use of ceramic sarcophagi, ceramic pots deposited in burial chambers, Greek lekythoi, which depict tender scenes of the departed, Mimbres “kill pots,” which had holes knocked into the bottoms, and contemporary funeral urns.

The videos in their entirety are extensive, but the arrangement makes it possible to dip in and out as one wishes. Without resorting to technical wizardry, they present inspiring examples and encourage further exploration. Paul Mathieu’s voice is compelling; his observations and comments are invariably apt and interesting, making viewing the videos pleasurable. The generosity demonstrated by the author in making these videos available to the general public is admirable. Mathieu has explained that his title, with both its exclamation point and question mark, is “interrogative . . . as the title is not meant as an absolutist statement….” Instead, the texts and related videos stimulate further investigation and consideration of the enormous role played in our lives by ceramics, highlighting intriguing connections between historical examples and contemporary work.

Visit Paul Mathieu’s website, with links to the texts and the YouTube videos.

Amy Gogarty is an independent researcher, writer, and artist living on the unceded shared traditional territories of the Coast Salish Peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She studied at ACA (now AUArts) and the University of Calgary, receiving her MFA in Painting in 1989. She taught histories and theories of visual arts at ACAD in Calgary for sixteen years prior to relocating to Vancouver in 2006. She has exhibited her paintings and ceramics locally and nationally and is the author of over 120 critical essays, reviews, or presentations relating to visual art and craft practice. In 2021, she was named an Honorary Member of NCECA, and she was short-listed for the Canadian Crafts Federation Robert Jekyll Award for Leadership in Craft. She sits on the Board of the North-West Ceramics Foundation and is a passionate supporter of ceramics in British Columbia.* (*Source: Craft Council of British Columbia’s website)

The fifth edition of the UNICUM Triennial, an international showcase of contemporary artistic techniques focusing on the medium of ceramics, was held in Ljubljana in 2023. UNICUM’s central exhibition ran from 15 May to 30 September. Alongside this internationally juried exhibition, which made its home in the atrium of the building shared by the Slovenian National Museum and the Museum of Natural History, visitors could enjoy ancillary exhibits throughout the year. Exhibitions are essential for Slovenia, as they shake up the artistic scene and bring a breath of fresh air to the medium in question, this time ceramics.

The Triennial, led with aplomb by Zora Žbontar, PhD, transcended its scope to achieve parity with several other renowned, internationally juried exhibitions, and the very structure of such endeavors illustrates the global systematization and institutionalization of ceramics as an art. With the aim of propelling ceramics to the true recognition of its independence as a medium, the Triennial is a testament to the flourishing of intimately related (both temporally and geographically) chain-linked events that lead to the acclaim, renown, and international acceptance of artists working in a particular genre. UNICUM has undoubtedly become an important link in that chain, with plenty of works from artists driving the currents of the international scene. The National Museum of Slovenia, as the main and corollary program’s host and spearheader, thus takes on a significant responsibility; not only is the museum itself a treasure trove of ceramic history, both in theory as well as practice, but in staging such an exhibition it also takes on the role of guardian and patron in the development of new practice based on or derived from ceramics as a medium. It fleshes out art and design as an endeavor with techniques that are not (yet) fully mature in Slovenia, at least not to the extent they are abroad. The Triennial’s format centers on a jury that chooses from among the submitted works that it considers to have gone above and beyond, pushing the boundaries and highlighting the most modern interpretations of what the medium is capable of. Perhaps the very concept of a triennial is foreign to Slovenia, especially in light of the tradition of biennales that are chosen, constructed, and headed by an influential curator. Nonetheless, such a system allows for a broader, freer approach to portraying an honest, representative cross-section of the state of ceramic design. As such, the exhibition needs not to subordinate itself to a single curator’s idiosyncratic whims. However, given the institutionalization of ceramics as a medium, that might make for a good contribution to future editions of UNICUM.

The international artists comprising the central exhibit were groomed and selected to contextualize the medium in the broadest possible forms of materialization. It comprised of Irena Biolchini, PhD (Italy), Višnja Slavica Gabout (Croatia), Alenka Gregorič (Slovenia), Karel Plemenitaš (Slovenia), and Lana Tikveša, PhD (Serbia), the jury combed through 319 entries to choose 64 works from 30 countries. The selected works topple many myths about the tradition and potential applications of the material, and the jury conferred its awards upon those bold souls who made quantum leaps in the techniques and guidelines that other ceramic artists can look to for inspiration.

The Grand PRIX UNICUM 2023 (ILIRIKA Acquisition) went to Dmitrij Buławka-Fankidejski (1988, Ukraine, living and working in Poland) for his work EXCERPT (2022). The jury explained its decision: “The artwork is able to position itself outside time, being contemporary in its ability to block the eternal. It has an inner vibration that comes from its combination of material and form.” There is no doubt that this work sets a new bar for artistic and aesthetic criteria, positioning the material as a meditative medium that eclipses the sense of touch. If it’s true that clay has a calming effect when we touch it, then the same must be said of this winning work, which resonates its vibrations through its cosmic surface.

Veljko Zejak (1980, Serbia, living and working in Slovenia) took home a UNICUM 2023 Award for his Ghost Cities (2022) work. Jury statement: “The artwork is able to grasp the feeling of being alien to something and somewhere while trying to interpret that distance through an act of creation. Ceramics comes as the perfect material to narrate such an experience thanks to its combination of soil exploitation and cultural mixture.” Veljko Zejak, whose piece Big Money took home UNICUM’s Grand Prix in 2015, explores the ground where sculpture, ceramics, and graphic design intersect. Thorough knowledge of technique is thus essential for this artist, as it becomes the primary means of expressing ideas and concepts.

An Honorary Award UNICUM 2023 went to Velimir Vukićević (1950, Serbia) for his piece The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (2022). Jury statement: “The artwork is able to combine visual attraction and perfect technique while keeping the mystery connected to the act of making. Moreover, it suggests a visual tactility that is very different from its actual materiality.” Velimir Vukićević’s masterful interlacing of 2D and 3D space has been a mainstay in the region’s ceramic production for 40 years already. His life’s work, which has continually sought to craft new spatial illusions both within and beyond a given object, spurs international contemplation about the medium’s tradition in the context of technical etude and bending the material to his will, as he has again shown in this work, which portrays the intersection of small sculptural objects and ceramics.

Catherine Sanke (1990, Germany) won the UNICUM 2023 Young Artist Award (under 35 years). Her piece In Night and Ice (2020) challenges the traditional practice of creating distance between viewer and object, as to really observe her work, you’ll need to rifle through a collection of well-archived little boxes. Jury statement: “The artwork shows a strong conceptual and poetic intention, combining idea and form in the shape of a private box of memories and silence.” Violating the rule of touch is an intriguing practice within this media, inviting a range of various interpretations through the immediate physical relationship that is either innately within us or is acquired through learning.

Małgorzata Maternik (1989, Poland) received a Recognition Award UNICUM 2023 for her work Home – Feelings, Place, Material (2021). The composition can be interpreted as a synthesis of materials, textures, structures, aromas, and warmth. Jury statement: “This artwork proves to be in the spirit of our time by combining different worlds of craft, i.e., textile and ceramic, suggesting a domestic landscape that merges with private and yet universal memories, such as home and childhood.”

Joanna Opalska-Brzecka (1981, Poland) also won a Recognition Award UNICUM 2023 for her work Forest Bag (2020). The artwork, which combines illustration with sculpture, shows a playful adoption of the sign and drawing. Thus, a narrative vessel is constructed, suggesting the idea of a bag traveling through time.

Another Recognition Award UNICUM 2023 was conferred upon Iva Brkić Walter (1987, Serbia) for her piece Sweet Nonsense (2022), which joins the popular trend of portraying objects with fetishist associations. Jury statement: “The artwork is able to present the utilitarian and domestic aspects of the ceramic material while suggesting a new reign of magic and dream.”

The Triennial’s central focus was supported by accompanying events staged by Tanja Lazetić, Alberto Gianfreda, Igor Ravbar, and the International Ceramics Student Exhibition at the Metelkova branch of the National Museum of Slovenia.

Tanja Lazetić played with the permanent collection at the National Museum, creating an intriguing insight into how we understand objects given their temporal and functional categorization, doing so to explore the roles and missions of museum institutions. Positioning places with their bottoms facing the viewer limits our perspective of the object’s interior, as it is only reflected from the protective glass case, and the exhibition is accentuated by the artist’s personal narrative as broadcast through cacophonous objects that slice into the heart of the museum’s sacrosanct quietude. Her work Table for Two highlights the practice of upending and rearranging permanent collections, a technique also used abroad due to the universality of ceramics as a tool to measure time, while the practice’s elasticity facilitates a fluid transition between different fields and themes.

Alberto Gianfreda understands the form of ceramics in a starkly unconventional way despite, perhaps with intentional irony, leaning heavily on its traditional and historical significance. The work, comprised of majolica shards, or faianza in Italian, makes a map of products and the locations of their origins. The mosaic composition of puzzle pieces vibrates in traditional murals. Destroying the old makes way to create new compositions and repurpose old material, while in combination with metal chains, it lends fluidity to the ceramic form, which is otherwise rigid.

Igor Ravbar’s work Imprints unites two of the most primal materials and imposes conditions on their existence in terms of composition and execution. His porcelain objects, flying in the face of the traditional use of plaster molds, are cast into sculpted molds, whose role and form in the exhibition hybridly see them transition from sculptural to utilitarian object. The transparent porcelain casts are perhaps just an imprint of the negative relief in the wooden molds, as the wood’s texture and structure can be seen on their surface, a shadow of the principal object. Mateja Kos, Ph.D., undersigned the exhibit by saying, “Igor Ravbar’s exhibited works are distinguished above all by an extremely precise feeling for the material and the ability to accentuate the complementary properties of the two materials used, both wood and ceramic and thus for the originality of artistic creation with archetypal materials, which is certainly a significant contribution to modern artistic expression.”

The International Student Exhibition of Ceramics presented works from students of the University of Ljubljana’s Academy of Fine Arts and Design and Faculty of Education, the University of Maribor’s Faculty of Education, and Belgrade’s Faculty of Applied Arts at the University of Arts. Mentors prof. Lana Tikveša, PhD, prof. Mirko Bratuša, prof. Darko Golija, and assist. prof. Kristina Rutar highlights the selected authors in equal parts due to the prospective promise of their academic research and the technical mastery their works portrayed, along with their positioning within the categorization of contemporary ceramics. Freedom in exploring the medium leads to a wealth of experience for viewers, as we are treated to video performances, large-scale works, smaller objects that tease the overlaps of architecture, sculpture, design, and multimedia.

Kristina Rutar is an artist born in 1989 in Slovenia. She completed her studies in ceramics at the Faculty of Education, University in Ljubljana, in 2013. She continued her post-graduate studies in interdisciplinary printmaking at the E. Geppert ASP in Wroclaw, Poland. She mainly works in sculpting and ceramics, questioning the traditions of the two mediums. She received numerous awards and acknowledgments, and her works can be found in public and private collections. She lives in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where she works as an assistant professor of ceramics at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design.

Captions

Installation views courtesy of Narodni muzej Slovenije (National Museum of Slovenia).

It felt like we were at a ceramic conference. The who’s-who of the pottery scene in Pondicherry and Auroville were present, as were Golden Bridge Pottery students, ex-students, staff & ex-staff. (Should have taken a group photo!)

Only, this was at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram cemetery in Muthialpet. We had come to bid our farewells to a special someone. As a heady aroma of flowers and incense filled the air, they built a brick kiln around our Debby, who was dressed in a pretty white frock, looking like translucent porcelain, serene and at peace, …and I promise I spotted her fleeting embarrassed smile for a fraction of a moment at the fuss around her.

Soon, a slurry of red clay and straw signaled the business we had come over for. Quietly, she went up with the fragrance of jasmine and the heat of casuarina wood, her fuel of choice for her production firings. The irony of the situation was not lost on the clutch of dewy-eyed potters present; what a beautiful way for a potter to move to another realm.

Deborah Smith once said to me, “The flower-power, hippie culture of Haight-Ashbury somehow bypassed me. I never even wore flowers in my hair till I reached South India!” Instead, she graduated in Japanese language at Stanford University, where, in 1967, she met Ray Meeker in the ceramics department of USC. She had just spent two years in Japan studying pottery-making and apprenticing with master potter Yamamoto Toshu in Bizen. She was now, again, heading to Japan as an interpreter to Susan Peterson, who was researching her book on Japan’s National Living Treasure, Hamada Shoji.

In 1971, a route from Mashiko led her to the Coromandel Coast of India, to Pondicherry’s Sri Aurobindo Ashram. An Ashram secretary, upon hearing of her ceramic background, asked if she would be interested in starting a pottery workshop for the Ashram. “Yes”, she said, “if my friend comes and agrees to build a kiln.” The friend, Ray, arrived a few months later, and the rest, as we say, is a melee of history and folklore.

Ray and Deborah had discovered in each other, a vague interest in the philosophy of the East, not uncommon in the era of the Beatles and Ravi Shankar. What began as a 200 square feet thatch-shed on a “lucky spot” assigned to them by the Mother at the Ashram, has today grown into a legacy. Golden Bridge Pottery got its name from a line from Sri Aurobindo‘s epic poem, Savitri, describing the Divine Mother,

“She is the golden bridge, the wonderful fire,
The luminous heart of the Unknown is she.”

Ray and Deborah have literally started a culture of stoneware ceramics in a hinterland known only for its local red-clay and terracotta. Once the production of stoneware pottery started in earnest, Ray began taking on students who were clamouring to learn the craft. In 1987, he put down his pottery tools to rediscover the architect in him; south India is dotted with his fire-stabilised mud houses. Since then, Deborah has carried on refining the wood-fired ceramics Golden Bridge Pottery (GBP as we know it), which is famous for and has become a benchmark in quality functional handmade tableware in India; all the works coming out of the studio, being hand-painted by her, …family heirlooms and collectibles today.

Although she was not our “official” teacher at GBP, (Ray had that mantle), several of us remember her quiet observations and thoughts over two tea breaks during the day, as we learned the ways of clay. Nearly 25 years later, every time I make a teapot spout, every time I pull a mug handle, every time I trim a vase’s foot, I think of Debby’s tips. She even taught me how to pack a pot, telling me, “If you don’t know how to pack a pot for transportation, you might as well not make the pot. The client doesn’t want to receive elements of tile-mosaic.” Point noted Deb. Amen.

Today, students of Golden Bridge Pottery are all over the map of contemporary ceramics. As important as that, is the community of studio potters that has grown in the villages and towns around GBP. Auroville, an international community outside Pondicherry, and its bioregion, itself boasts over 30 studio potters known for everything from functional to sculptural ceramics, often referred to as “Pondicherry Pottery.” The magnitude of this spread of craft and knowledge hit me in the gut a couple of years ago, when I was making a movie, Golden Bridges, to screen at the 50th Congress of the International Academy of Ceramics in Geneva. The outpouring of gratitude, respect, regard, and love for GBP from all quarters I was interviewing was an emotional rollercoaster.

Today, Ray carries on making his monumental sculptures. The swansong exhibition that he has been threatening us with is, thankfully, nowhere in sight. Deborah gave up actively participating at the studio in 2019, deciding to take the time to pen her memoirs. She met her date with jasmine garlands, incense, and casuarina cut-offs on the 21st of July, 2023.

Our Golden Bridge Pottery is in a state of flux.

Let us see what tomorrow brings.

“A subdued sky with beautiful and delicate brush-strokes as if painted by Deborah herself, letting a pale sun peep through, as it greeted her into the golden realm, her new abode.”

Quote from Deborah’s friend, Sunaina Mandeen, co-founder of PondyCAN, at the break of dawn, a day after the funeral, when friends and family assigned Deborah’s ashes to the Pondicherry sea.

Deborah Smith along with Ray Meeker founded Golden Bridge Pottery, which is an affiliate member of the IAC.

September 2023

Adil Writer is an architect-turned ceramic artist who reached GBP in 1998 for a short course in ceramics, and “did not go back home!” Instead, he moved to Auroville where he is a partner at Mandala Pottery which specialises in handmade functional and sculptural ceramics.

Watch Adil Writer’s “Golden Bridges” movie, screened at the 50th Congress of the International Academy of Ceramics in Geneva, 2022.

To Sarah Pschorn (b. 1989), her solo exhibition ‘Records of Gravity’, held at Gerhard Marcks Haus in Bremen in early 2023, is not so much a look back as a look forward. Despite her years of experience working with clay, she feels she is still a novice. This is a portrait of a young sculptor and her art.

For a long time, she did not feel comfortable being called a ‘sculptor’. You tend to associate that with removing material, such as stone or wood, rather than constructing something with clay. At first, she was often called a designer but she’s certainly not that. She makes sculptures. Not always using ceramics only; random objects she has found and other materials such as metal and glass also often find their way into her work. She has her own practice and is part of a whole movement of contemporary (female) sculptors who work with clay, which also includes Nicole Cherubini (US), Elsa Sahal (FR) and Virginia Leonard (NZ). Pschorn’s work is noticed and praised: at the 62nd edition of the Faenza Biennale, one of the world’s most important events for contemporary ceramic art, for example, she was awarded the Monica Biserni Prize (fig. 2).

Sarah Pschorn was born in Dresden, a city that was destroyed in World War II and, to this day, is still being restored to its former, baroque glory. The lavish Meissen porcelain from that stylistic period – especially the porcelain designed under the supervision of sculptor Johann Joachim Kändler (1706-1775) – inspired her graduation work. Pschorn was very familiar with clay long before she entered professional ceramics training. As a five-year old girl, she accompanied her mother to a pottery course. She found it boring at first, possibly because there were so many adults and because she had to be quiet. At some point, however, she discovered the great potential of clay: you can build anything you want with it. She continued classes until she was eighteen, and was fortunate enough to meet teacher Sonja Puppe who encouraged her to experiment. Pschorn taught herself throwing. When, at the age of eight, she wanted her own potter’s wheel, her mother made her choose between a summer holiday or a potter’s wheel. She chose the latter and set up a workplace on the balcony of their rented flat in Dresden. When her teacher Puppe was unable to work due to illness Pschorn, as her longest-serving student, took over the lessons for a while. She was just 16 years old. Puppe also invited befriended artists and ceramists to teach guest lessons. Nevertheless, Pschorn could not yet envisage a profitable, full-time career in ceramics.

That changed when she started volunteering at the Řehlovice cultural centre in the Czech Republic, run by ceramic designer Lenka Holíková. There, for the first time, she saw how artists work and what her daily life could also be like. She created some clay pieces and even had a small exhibition with an accompanying catalogue. Opting to become an artist was still too great a step, however. After secondary school, she worked at a Montessori school in the south of France. She had decided to become an art teacher, even though she secretly knew that she wouldn’t really enjoy that enough. This was also evident to the Admissions Committee of the Burg Giebichenstein Art Academy in Halle, where she applied for the Art Education course, and she was not accepted. The head of the ceramics department, Prof. Martin Neubert was nonetheless enthusiastic about her portfolio and advised her to gain another year’s experience of life and then come back. Which she did.

During that year, she worked for a traditional pottery in Dresden that used wood-fired kilns. It was an unpaid, and by no means easy apprenticeship, working from 7 a.m. and throwing some 50 items a day. There was little room for experimentation and imagination, the focus here was on the craft of consistently recreating familiar household objects. She learned a lot, especially that this was not for her.

The day finally came that she could start art school. Accustomed to starting work early, Pschorn reported at 8 a.m. but there was no one there. It was not until ten o’clock that – to her surprise and relief – the school came alive. Burg Giebichenstein (‘die Burg’) is a renowned art school that had close ties to the Bauhaus. In 1925, ‘Formmeister’ Gerhard Marcks and his students Marguerite Friedlaender and Franz Wildenhain made the move from Germany’s most famous design school to Halle, where they shaped the sculpture and ceramics workshops with their modern views.¹ Their influence remains evident in the training programme to this day. While Pschorn focused on ceramics within the sculpture department, she also ventured into other departments, especially photography. She was surprised at how well art suited her.

In the third year, art history classes covered the Baroque period and she became interested in early Meissen porcelain. Items she created for her graduation series ‘Copy and Paste’ included large, porcelain pots, clearly inspired by the past, combined with other materials such as found glass goblets and experimental surface treatments (fig. 3). She calls them three-dimensional collages. Taking an interest in the zeitgeist, she also applied modern techniques, scanning and digitally deforming shapes before printing them with a 3D printer. Thus making her work more abstract (fig. 4).

Even during her studies, Sarah Pschorn frequently exhibited her work. It was almost as if her graduation was just a part-time job, she jokes. She also regularly entered competitions and these activities helped her to set up a professional practice once she had completed her studies. After graduating, in 2015, she moved to Leipzig. Whereas ten years earlier, Berlin had been the place to be for ‘die Burg’ graduates, it was now Leipzig. Not that Halle was not a nice place to live. Indeed, for many it was a case of: I don’t want to stay here, but I have no reason to leave. She moved into a small studio in an old factory and managed to obtain a second-hand kiln. A grant for new graduates enabled her to start making large pieces again. She occasionally also worked elsewhere through residencies, including one in Japan.

Which brings us to Sarah Pschorn’s first major solo museum exhibition. The idea for that arose in 2020 when she was working with B14 Gerhard Marcks Künstlerhaus in Ahrenshoop. The Gerhard Marcks Haus sculpture museum in Bremen, which has close ties with the residency venue, decided to financially support the young artist, enabling her to create new work, and offered her an exhibition; an admirable patronage to keep sculpture thriving.

Her earliest work at the exhibition dated from 2018 (fig. 5). The deconstructed shapes from her graduation series reverberated in ‘Pushing each other further 2’ but her work later became increasingly organic and pictorial. A development she attributes to the time she spent on her allotment and her growing connection with nature, which she incorporates into her sculptures. With its upward ‘thrust’, the ‘Cloudy’ series (fig. 6) clearly reflects a connection with nature. The lighting installation, which very gradually changes the colour of the room from bright daylight to a dusky pink, enhances the feeling of looking at something that is developing, growing, and blossoming (fig. 7).

Other work reflects a certain humour, such as the ‘Balance’ series (fig. 8), each of which reflects a different perception of balance. From a slouching standing leg and pillars propping each other up to a sculpture wobbling on a collapsed ‘dolly’ (a small platform on wheels, often used to move museum pieces). The ’Heaviness’ series includes towel sculptures, created by dipping towels in liquid clay and then firing them, which burns the textiles but preserves the texture. (fig. 9 and 10).

The highlight of the exhibition is ‘Paradise’ (fig. 11). As a child, Pschorn was convinced that she was destined to live underwater; she had even told her mother of their inevitably impending parting. Now she has created for herself a wonderful underwater world in which sculptures made from shells rise up like corals on their pedestals. She produced some of these works, including the immense eye-catcher ‘Deep Blue Sea’ (2022), at EKWC, the ‘international artist-in-residence and centre of excellence for ceramics’ in Oisterwijk, the Netherlands (fig. 13). She worked there for three months, where she was able to use the large kilns and draw on the existing expertise in making such complex works. She used a massive five hundred kilos of clay in this one sculpture, a physically highly demanding task. Glazing the work from blue to pink and applying iridescent lustre was done in several firing rounds. It was a nail-biting moment each time the kiln opened: did it go well?

Clearly it did, yet the fact that she succeeded does not mean that she has finished with clay. On the contrary, Sarah Pschorn sees herself continuing each of the themes of the exhibition (Balance, Heaviness, Cloudy, Paradise) for a long time to come. As in a book, where each chapter could have been a whole novel in itself. When you work with a particular material or technique for a very long time something interesting happens, Pschorn feels. She accepts that phases of boredom and resistance have to be endured to be overcome. Just like in a relationship, as a deeper understanding gradually develops. Only then does quality emerge. And genuine love.

The exhibition was accompanied by the catalogue Sarah Pschorn – Records of Gravity, edited by Bettina Berg, Mirjam Verhey-Focke and Veronika Wiegartz, 64 pages, ISBN 9783948914127

This article by Victoria Anastasyadis is a specially updated and translated version for Ceramics Now of a text that previously appeared in Vormen uit Vuur 252 (2023/2). ‘Vormen uit Vuur’ is a Dutch academic journal on glass and ceramics, published since 1952 by the Nederlandse Vereniging van Vrienden van Ceramiek en Glas. The journal appears in print and includes English summaries.

Visit Sarah Pschorn’s website and Instagram page.

Translation by Melanie Niesink.

Captions

• fig 1. Sarah Pschorn in her Studio in Leipzig, 2022, photo Jakob Adolphi
• fig 2. Various works, awarded with the Monika Biserni Prize, 2020, porcelain, clay, platinum, glaze, lustre, found objects (glass and metal), heights 34-66 cm., photo Jakob Adolphi
• fig 3.’Material Girl I’ series, 2015, porcelain, clay, glass, silicone, nail polish, found objects, platinum, aluminium foil and epoxy, photo Jakob Adolphi
• fig 4. ‘Styrocut #1’, 2015, porcelain, photo Jakob Adolphi
• fig 5. ‘Pushing each other further 2’, 2018-2023, clay, glaze, wood, lacquer, photo Rüdiger Lubricht
• fig 6. ‘Cloudy 30’, 2022, porcelain, glaze, lustre, 95 x 50 x 45 cm., photo Jakob Adolphi
• fig 7. Gallery view of exhibition ‘Records of Gravity’ – ‘Cloudy’, 2020-2023, porcelain, glaze, platinum, chandelier, Gerhard-Marcks-Haus, Bremen (DE), 2023, photo Rüdiger Lubricht
• fig 8. Gallery view of exhibition ‘Records of Gravity’ – ‘Balance’, Gerhard-Marcks-Haus, Bremen (DE), 2023, photo Rüdiger Lubricht
• fig 9. Sarah Pschorn in her Studio at EKWC working on the ‘Towel sculptures’, 2022, photo Erik Benjamins
• fig 10. Gallery view of exhibition ‘Records of Gravity’ – ‘Schwere’ (Heaviness), 2023, Gerhard-Marcks-Haus, Bremen (DE), photo Ruediger Lubricht
• fig 11. Gallery view of exhibition ‘Records of Gravity’ – ‘Paradies’ (Paradise), Gerhard- Marcks-Haus, Bremen (DE), 2023, photo Rüdiger Lubricht
• fig 12. Detail of ‘Pirates Gospel 1’, 2021, clay, glaze, platinum and lustre, photo Jakob Adolphi
• fig 13. Sarah Pschorn working on ‘Deep Blue Sea’ at the European Ceramic Work Centre (EKWC), Oisterwijk, 2022, photo Sarah Pschorn

1. Interview with the curators
2. Martinsons Award 2023
3. Walking Together – Portuguese exhibition
4. Self-Medication – Korean exhibition
5. Agnė Šemberaitė – Fear Whispering: A Journey Within
6. Sanita Ābelīte – Terra
7. Dainis Pundurs – Visualising Gravity
8. Kaspars Geiduks – Elements
9. Elīna Titāne and Una Gura – 3+4

Interview with the curators of the Latvia Ceramics Biennale

The Latvia Ceramics Biennale is a significant platform for ceramic artists in the Baltic region and beyond. How was the biennale conceived, and what is your vision for the event?

The Latvia Ceramics Biennale was launched in 2015 with the idea of holding an international competition exhibition dedicated to the most internationally recognized Latvian ceramic artist Pēteris Martinsons, calling it the “Martinsons Award”. At that time, we, the Latvian Center for Contemporary Ceramics and the Rothko Museum, immediately understood that the event should be regular and its scale would be large enough. In order to be able to properly prepare it ourselves and also for the artists to have time to prepare high-quality applications, we decided that it should take place once every two years. And that means it is a Biennale. But the Biennale means that one competition exhibition is not enough, and a conceptually thought-out program of events must be created around it. Since its inception, each time, the Biennale program has been devoted to a specific topic, such as the reflection of Latvian contemporary ceramics, the promotion of the Baltic region’s contemporary ceramics, as well as this time with exhibitions of foreign contemporary ceramics in Latvia.

It’s been a pleasure to be a part of the jury for this year’s competition and witness the opening of multiple exhibitions first-hand. Can you walk us through the main events and shows that define the 4th edition of the biennale?

The central event of the Biennale is, of course, the Martinson Award, an international contemporary ceramics competition exhibition. Solo exhibitions of the winners of previous Biennales also became a tradition. This time it was Agnes Šemberaites’ (LT / winner of Martinsons Award’s International Gold in 2021) exhibition “Fear Whispering” and the performative installation “Visualizing Gravity” by Dainis Pundurs (LV / winner of Martinsons Award’s National Gold in 2021). An important place in this year’s Biennale was devoted to two guest country exhibitions – the Portuguese contemporary ceramics exhibition “Walking Together” and the Korean ceramics exhibition “Self-Medication”.

The Martinsons Award 2023 exhibition is on view at the Rothko Museum (Daugavpils, Latvia) through February 18, 2024.

With the Martinsons Award attracting a record number of applications this year, what do you think is drawing artists to this competition?

Martinson Award competition exhibition is one of the central events organized by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Ceramics. However, the interest in this event is drawn not only by the event itself but also by all the other previously conducted exhibitions and events. Professionalism in displaying the works, different approaches to creating the scenography of each individual exhibition, and general attitude to the ceramics medium; all this work for the past decade has resulted in artists’ trust to create a high-quality exhibition and a good display of each individual work. Sure, there is also a prize motivator in such events, but we hope that our overall activities and recognition for professionalism are the main motivators for being part of the Martinsons Award exhibition.

Could you discuss the influence of Pēteris Martinsons on contemporary Latvian ceramics and how the biennale continues his legacy?

As mentioned, Pēteris Martinsons is Latvia’s most internationally recognized ceramist. In Soviet times, he was almost the only ceramicist who regularly traveled around the world, visiting exhibitions and participating in symposiums. Of course, when he returned home, he always shared his impressions and experiences. For many years, Pēteris Martinsons was also a teacher at the Latvian Art Academy, where he raised and inspired a generation of ceramic artists currently active in Latvian ceramics.

The Latvia Ceramics Biennale takes care of the name of Pēteris Martinsons by organizing a competition exhibition named after him. The Rothko Museum, on the other hand, as a co-organizer of the biennale, preserves and popularizes the legacy left by Martinsons. In 2022, the Rothko Museum opened Martinsons House, where you can view the largest collection of the artist’s works in Latvia, which he donated to the museum himself in the last years of his life.

This year’s theme, Troubled Waters, resonates deeply with current global issues. How have you seen this theme expressed in this year’s biennale submissions?

One of the main substances working with ceramics is water; thus, the theme is relevant to each submitted work. Yet this relevance was seen more vividly for some works – water dissolving porcelain or unfired clay before disappearance, glazes resembling water, or projections of endless majestic waves accompanied by soundscape. Some themes are linked to the field of water – melting icebergs, fountains resembling figures, lifeforms from another water-filled planet, or the depiction of fluidity itself. However, this theme is also relevant as a metaphor, and artists are depicting the inner state of the troubled mind, the feelings of the current state of the surrounding world, and what can make you calm in all this madness of contemporary life.

Could you share some highlights from this year’s winners and what they reveal about current trends in ceramics? And speaking of trends, have you observed any particular directions in the submissions you received?

The main winners of this year’s competition are Sanita Ābelīte (Latvia) with the work “Behind the Mirror” (National category) and Milena Piršteliene (Lithuania) with the work “Panic Rooms” (International category). Both works consist of multiple pieces and depict not only the theme or the title itself but also the vast spectrum of possibilities ceramic materials offer. In Milena’s case, it is a set of 16 perfectly shaped wall pieces, each showing the professionalism of the artist’s technical abilities, and created as separate “room” using graphics and painting techniques on the ceramic surface, all together they create a carpet of stories – troubled mind in a turbulence of time. Sanita follows her artistic path and makes a set of multiple objects – from sphinx or bird-like creatures to chandeliers and bowls, from delicate teapots and goblets to egg-shaped figures with decorative paintings. It is vividly seen how all of her work is a dedication to the material of ceramics and its ability to be plastic and sharp, decorative and functional, fragile and rustic.

Speaking of trends in submitted works, we can point out the use of different media – projections, video fixation, adding video to the work, or adding photography – it seems that some artists see this as the only continuation of developing the ceramics medium. And yet, whenever such thought comes to mind, there are works that once again show the endless possibilities of pure ceramics in the hands of the professional.

This year, visitors have the unique opportunity to see Korean ceramics in the Self-Medication exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Art and Design in Riga. How did this collaboration come about?

Cooperation with Korean partners, the Korea Ceramic Foundation and the Gyeonggi Museum of Contemporary Ceramics, for the Latvian Center for Contemporary Ceramics began in 2021. In the beginning, we initiated the exhibition exchange project. Everything happened quite quickly and spontaneously, but the result was good. In September 2023, the Gyeonggi Museum of Ceramic Design in Korea hosted the “Safe Horizons” exhibition of contemporary ceramics from the Baltic States, where 75 Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian artists were exhibited. Continuing the cooperation, an exhibition of Korean ceramics was opened at the Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Riga this year as part of the program of the Latvian Ceramics Biennale in 2023.

Can you tell us about the biennale’s travels to Portugal and the reciprocal visit by the International Biennial of Ceramic Art of Aveiro to Latvia?

The partnership dates back to 2021, when the 15th International Biennale of Artistic Ceramics in Aveiro, Portugal, held Biennial NEXT, an online networking event for ceramic competitions and biennales worldwide, which allowed the discovery of different dynamics, goals, and approaches in the rich and creative field of ceramic art. The meeting started a cooperation between the Aveiro and Latvian biennales that set about launching the first exhibition exchange project towards the international promotion of Portuguese and Latvian contemporary ceramics. In this context, the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Ceramics organized the Portuguese exhibition, WALKING TOGETHER, in Riga Art Space, and Aveiro hosted the BALTIC CURRENT, featuring artists from Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania in October 2023. Both exhibitions are the collective effort of creative teams from both biennales and mark a promising starting point for future cooperation.

Dainis Pundurs presented a one-person performance this year during the opening. What can you tell us about this performance and its place in the biennale?

Dainis Pundurs was a winner of Martinsons Award’s National Gold in 2021. This year, we invited him to participate in the Biennale’s program with his solo project “Visualising Gravity”.

“Visualising Gravity” is an experimental work that opens the viewer’s attention to the dynamic interplay between the ceramic artist’s hands and the material’s physical resistance and illustrates the invisible nature of the ubiquitous force of attraction. The artist interacts with the material and the gravitational force, following a precision-drawn boundary between clay’s material consistency and weight. The resulting shapes can be compared to an imprint left by an invisible force.

The artist does not care whether the process is labeled a performance or a public demonstration of his technique. What matters is allowing the viewer to observe the ceramic material’s usually unseen unique natural properties and experience its primal force. Staging a studio situation in the exhibition space shows ceramics as a diverse medium capable of addressing the viewer in the changing and, therefore, most intimate stage of creation.

Looking beyond this year’s biennale, what future developments do you hope to see in the field of contemporary ceramics, both in Latvia and internationally?

The development of contemporary ceramics has been very rapid in recent decades, while conventional ceramics biennales and other events are getting old, losing their relevance, and being unable to keep up with the trends in the development of contemporary ceramics. Institutions related to the development of contemporary ceramics should look for new development directions and implement other forms of cooperation with artists. On the other hand, ceramic artists should look more toward visual art without limiting themselves to events exclusively dedicated to ceramics media.

As founders of the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Ceramics, you play a leading role in organizing the biennale. What other activities and programs are you focusing on at the center?

Apart from organizing the biennale, since 2013, the Latvian Center for Contemporary Ceramics has been organizing an annual ceramics symposium, Ceramic Laboratory, and exhibitions of Latvian and foreign ceramicists. One of the directions of our activity is the popularization of the contemporary ceramics of the Baltic region in the world.

Answers by Valentins Petjko & Aivars Baranovskis, Curators of Latvia Ceramics Biennale / Latvian Centre for Contemporary Ceramics

Interview by Vasi Hirdo, editor-in-chief of Ceramics Now, December 2013

Photos by Didzis Grodzs

1. Interview with the curators
2. Martinsons Award 2023
3. Walking Together – Portuguese exhibition
4. Self-Medication – Korean exhibition
5. Agnė Šemberaitė – Fear Whispering: A Journey Within
6. Sanita Ābelīte – Terra
7. Dainis Pundurs – Visualising Gravity
8. Kaspars Geiduks – Elements
9. Elīna Titāne and Una Gura – 3+4

Beginnings
It begins with a black-and-white photograph from the 1950s. Danish artist Axel Salto is standing in the old coal kiln in The Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Manufactory in Copenhagen, looking down at one of his masterpieces, The Core of Power. It is a sculpture, an object, an almost living thing made out of clay. Despite being fired into ceramics, its clay body appears to be growing on the spot. Something sprouts from the budding base, placed on the kiln’s floor next to Salto’s shiny shoes. He looks down at this wilful object with its three compelling but disturbing limbs, and it seems to look back at him as if it had something to say about its own nature and origin as if it were alive with the very fire that hardened it.

This picture of Axel Salto shows the conversation between an artist and his work. But it is also an apt portrait of a man who was always in urgent conversation with the world around him, with the sea shells that he found on the beach, with cones, fossils, clay, paint, pen, and paper, or with all the people he collaborated with. Axel Salto was always working, thinking, and writing, always exploring the beauty and danger of what he called ‘the miracle of growth,’ the never-ending sprouting force that constantly makes and breaks the forms and bodies of nature. Throughout his life, he was inspired by images of growth and transformation and, in fact, sought to embed the very experience of our pulsating world in his work. Sprouting plant motifs, bulging ceramic objects, glazes in flux, and repetitive designs in patterns of vibrant colors and dynamic motifs are examples of this across media.

Words and clay
The black and white photograph marks the entrance to the exhibition Playing with Fire: Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto, which is currently on show at CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark. But, as the title suggests, it also marks the beginning of a conversation across time between Edmund de Waal, porcelain’s storyteller par excellence, and the 20th-century Danish master of stoneware. It is a conversation that takes us to the heart of Axel Salto’s practice but also to a significant artistic encounter. At first glance, there seems to be a long way to go from the drama of Salto’s sprouting works in burning, smoldering glazes to de Waal’s installations of small porcelain vessels with subtle variations in glaze color. But if we look beyond the surface, the stylistic differences between these two artists are canceled out by the similarity in working methods, their understanding of creativity, and their expression in both words and clay. Both are writers who reflect on the meaning and emotional value of objects and materiality through writing. As a result, we find the written voices of both artists as a conversation that runs throughout the exhibition. Words, clay, and materiality are deeply connected.

Going for a walk
‘This is a very personal walk in the company of Axel Salto’. These are the first words of Edmund de Waal’s narrative that runs along the walls of the exhibition. When he was asked to curate an international exhibition of Salto’s work, going for a walk together was his way of approaching the encounter with the complexity of Salto’s endless repetitions and variations of form. De Waal was driven by the urge not only to understand the work but also to get to know the person behind it. To understand Salto’s ‘pacing of the world’, to see what he saw when he walked along the pebbled coast in Denmark or up the mountainsides when he lived in the south of France. ‘Imagine walking with him in the country. He notices things, turns back, picks up stones, draws a leaf, hums a tune, tells a story, meanders, pinches some clay into a little vessel’, de Waal’s text continues.

As a result of this imaginary journey with Axel Salto at his side, de Waal has designed the exhibition as a walk through different spaces that convey the pulses of energy that run through Salto’s practice. It is a winding road through a display of his expressive work in various media – his ceramics, prints, sketches and drawings, textile and paper designs – and his words and books.

The exhibition is the culmination of a conversation that began 30 years ago when Edmund de Waal first saw Axel Salto’s budding and sprouting ceramics at the Danish Design Museum in Copenhagen and left the building quite confused and mystified. Years later, in his book ‘20th Century Ceramics’, he placed Axel Salto among a group of post-war existentialists who were dealing with the anxieties of the nuclear age. But as de Waal discovered in his research for this project, Axel Salto is not only concerned with the potential hazards of the nuclear era and the awe-inspiring force of nature. Salto’s work is also driven by pleasure, playfulness, and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge that draws him closer to the core of nature, art, and existence.

Into the burning now
The drama in Axel Salto’s practice revolves around his obsession with the constant metamorphic movements in nature and the seductive and dangerous potential of change. In his book ‘Det brændende Nu’ (1938), Salto introduces the term ‘the burning now’ to describe the very moment when one thing becomes another, be it the instant a germinating bulb first breaks open or the moment when the antlers penetrate Actaeon’s forehead as he transforms into a stag. Such beautiful and inexorable moments of metamorphosis are essential to Salto’s art, and the search for them seems to guide his hand as he lengthens the spikes on his vessels right to the point of breaking.

Creativity is an ongoing process in which making and breaking are inextricably linked, something that unites these two artists on a very deep level. ‘If one thing really works, I don’t care how many things go wrong’, Edmund de Waal said as he opened his kiln to find only one beautiful porcelain tile among several broken ones. Shards are also part of his walk with Salto. It is part of the conversation about change. When you open the door to the kiln, you never know what you will find. Playing with fire is what potters do. At some point, you have to surrender to the unpredictability and caprices of fire. A kiln is a place where you have to slow down and let go.

Moving from the kiln
And this is where Edmund de Waal’s walk with Axel Salto begins. The first space of the exhibition is a dark kiln, a black installation filled with Salto’s masterpieces on open display. Once our eyes have adjusted, the glazes, shapes, and colors come to life in the congested, shadowy space of the kiln. This is where de Waal has the opportunity to fulfill what he describes as a personal desire to bring things together in close proximity and understand Salto’s work in a physical way. And this physicality is important throughout the exhibition. Wherever possible, Salto’s works are presented in close proximity, not isolated in vitrines far away from each other, but as pulses of juxtaposition, as objects in conversation with each other. They are presented in much the same way as Salto presented his work in the 1950s, in layers that allow us to see how shapes and patterns jump from one medium to another, how his dynamic sketches and drawings correspond with ceramic forms, or how he repeats patterns engraved in ceramics in colorful designs for textiles and paper.

The black and white photograph transforms into a saturated, polyphonic space of color and play. The exhibition offers a transformative journey through different spaces that show Salto’s stoneware up close, his yellow, blue, and red glazes, his colorful book designs, his exploratory drawings, his obsession with metamorphosis and the haunting tales of Ovid, and finally, his advocacy of art, creativity and play in children’s lives. In this last space, everyone is invited to stamp with reproductions of Axel Salto’s printing stamps for children from the 1940’s. Although the furniture is designed for children, you will often see adults sitting at the low table, stamping away, following Salto’s advice to play, try things out, and let the stamps work on their own. ‘You are in the world of printing stamps, in Magic Land, where you can decide everything’, Salto writes, and Edmund de Waal has stuck this wonderful phrase on the wall by the table. An important message to convey today when many children are faced with defined activities and narrated learning.

A porcelain pavillon
And so, after the winding road through Salto’s life’s work, we encounter Edmund de Waal’s new installation, which he has called ‘the burning now’. The title is, of course, a homage to his interlocutor, but it also refers to the moving feeling he wants to convey with his installation. In contrast to the dark and theatrical kiln room at the beginning of the exhibition, de Waal’s ‘burning now’ is a white pavilion covered in porcelain slip with gold and words about metamorphosis embedded in the kaolin. Inside the pavilion, soft light falls through a skylight made of thin porcelain tiles, gently illuminating a large vitrine containing a poetic response to Salto made of beaten silver, porcelain tiles, shadows and voids. Every object in the installation has gone through stages of transition, whether it is porcelain vessels, shards, or oxidized silver. The installation is an articulation of de Waal’s journey with Salto and a kind of shared space that speaks of anxiety and play and the absolute necessity of making texts and objects and placing them near each other. And to keep going. ‘To return to the things that matter. To repeat and believe that it’s possible to start over, to make another vessel and to do more with the material between your hands’, explains de Waal.

And so the exhibition begins and ends with clay. With Edmund de Waal continuing the experiments that Axel Salto can no longer carry out, challenging the material, failing and succeeding in shaping very thin porcelain tiles for the first time. De Waal’s installation is a quiet room, and yet ’you just want it to sing,’ he explains. And Salto seems to be responding from the past, bringing his own vessels into the soundscape: ‘In these smoldering, gushing vases, the stoneware bursts into song, and for what else, actually, should clay be used? For play when the heart swells, and for relief from misery.’

Art can be craft can be art
A walk with these two artists is also a walk away from old and restrictive distinctions between arts and crafts. Edmund de Waal is a pioneer in bringing pottery into the world of fine arts. To complete the circle, Axel Salto insisted that art should be a part of interior design, alongside beautiful furniture or perhaps curtains made of his own textile design. In the company of these two artists, the separation of arts and crafts does not seem to make sense. ‘It’s a grotesque simplification of the power and presence of objects. A misunderstanding of what work means’, says Edmund de Waal, and Salto replies: ‘Thus the work of art, the eternal thing, has its message to convey from person to person. Like a radiator, it should be introduced into modern homes, then you could really talk about functionalism.’

The walk is coming to an end. But the conversation continues. There is more to say. About the collective efforts in art. About how crossing boundaries can serve as interesting bridges toward new conversations and collaborations. Salto crossed many disciplines throughout his life and collaborated extensively with fellow artists, glaze engineers, potters, architects, editors, bookbinders, printers, and other specialists. He said that his stoneware would never have seen the light of day had it not been for his collaboration with the ceramicist Carl Halier. Although he believed that the artist had a special voice and responsibility, he was well aware that he owed much of his success to a team of skilled professionals. Or as Edmund de Waal puts it when talking about his studio of artists, creatives, and specialists: ‘There is absolutely the existential moment of making a pot or a text by yourself, but then there is the whole collective endeavor that allows it all to happen.’ A skilled man in each station, as Axel Salto puts it in 1949 when he talks about doing the works for his 60th-anniversary show at Charlottenborg in Copenhagen. ‘All the ceramic objects in the exhibition are the result of collaboration at The Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Manufactory, teamwork. The most skilled man at each station – turner, glazer, kiln-man, artist, otherwise we would never have come very far … Should you offer me acclaim, I point to my comrades and invite them to share it with me. We line up and bow. Curtain down.’

The exhibition Playing with Fire: Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto is on display at CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark until 11th August 2024. After that, it will travel to Kunstsilo in Norway, and its final showing will be at The Hepworth Wakefield in England in 2025. The exhibition is a conversation across time that continues in the richly illustrated book Playing with Fire, that has been published together with the exhibition by Forlaget Press. The book comprises a rich selection of excerpts from Axel Salto’s writings that have been translated into English for the first time, a new essay by Edmund de Waal in which he investigates the concept of metamorphosis and the fusing of clay and words, an essay by co-curator and writer Sanne Flyvbjerg as well as her conversation with Edmund de Waal in which they explore Salto’s practice and the artistic encounter.

Playing with Fire: Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto is a result of a collaboration between CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark and Kunstsilo in Kristiansand, Norway. The exhibition presents works from the collections of both institutions: The Royal Copenhagen Collection at CLAY and the Tangen Collection from Kunstsilo. The works are installed in an exhibition design by Hutchison Kivotos Architects in London. A generous grant from the British philanthropic AKO Foundation supports the exhibition project and its international tour.

Axel Salto (1889-1961)
Axel Salto was a prolific artist, designer and writer, who played an important role in Danish Modernism. Over the course of five decades his practice expanded from painting to include ceramic, woodcuts, graphic design, book illustration, jewellery, textile design and interior design. In 1914, he graduated as painter from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In 1917-20 he founded the avant-garde journal Klingen (The Blade). His career as a ceramicist began in the 1920s when he designed porcelain vases and bowls for the Danish manufacturer Bing & Grøndahl. From 1929 he was linked to the stoneware studio at The Royal Copenhagen Porcelain Manufactory. His partnership with Royal Copenhagen continued for more than a decade resulting in new iconic sculptures such as ‘The Atomic Bomb’ (1949) and ‘The Core of Power’ (1956).

Salto designed wallpaper and paper for bookbinding throughout the 1930s and 1940s. From 1945 onwards he collaborated with the Copenhagen firm L. F. Foght, for which he designed patterns for printed fabrics. Alongside his artistic work, Salto published a number of books of his own design. He also wrote countless essays, columns and articles. A highly influential retrospective work, The Sprouting Style (1949), was published in honour of his 60th birthday.

Salto had numerous solo-exhibitions in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and France. He was awarded the ‘Grand Prix’ at the World Expo in Paris in 1937 and at the Milan Triennale in 1951. In 1961 he received a gold medal at the international ceramics. exhibition at Musée des Beaux-Arts In Ostend, Belgium. In the 50’s his ceramics and textiles played an important role in promoting Danish design and crafts, known as Danish Modern, in North America.

Edmund de Waal (1964-)
Edmund de Waal is an internationally acclaimed artist and writer, best known for his large-scale installations of porcelain vessels, often created in response to collections and archives or the history of a particular place. His interventions have been made for diverse spaces and museums worldwide, including the Musée Nissim de Camondo, Paris; The British Museum, London; The Frick Collection, New York; Canton Scuola Synagogue, Venice; Schindler House, Los Angeles; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna and V&A Museum, London. De Waal is also renowned for his bestselling family memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010), and The White Road (2015). His most recent book, Letters to Camondo, a series of haunting letters written during lockdown was published in April 2021. He was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction by Yale University in 2015. In 2021 he was awarded a CBE for his services to art.

Sanne Flyvbjerg is a curator and writer.

Captions

• Playing with Fire – Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto, installation view, colour, CLAY, 2023 © Axel Salto – VISDA Photo Ole Akhøj
• Playing with Fire – Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto, installation view, line, CLAY, 2023 © Axel Salto – VISDA Photo Ole Akhøj
• Playing with Fire – Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto, installation view, colour, CLAY, 2023 © Axel Salto – VISDA Photo Ole Akhø
• Playing with Fire – Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto, installation view, play, CLAY, 2023 © Axel Salto – VISDA Photo Ole Akhøj
• Installation view. Collection of Salto’s ceramics in ‘the kiln’. CLAY, 2023 © Axel Salto – VISDA Photo Ole Akhøj
• Installation view. Collection of Salto’s ceramics in ‘the kiln’. CLAY, 2023 © Axel Salto – VISDA Photo Ole Akhøj
• the burning now, installation view, CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art, Denmark, 2023 © Edmund de Waal, Photo Ole Akhøj
• the burning now, installation view, CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art, Denmark, 2023 © Edmund de Waal, Photo Ole Akhøj
• the burning now, installation view, CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art, Denmark, 2023 © Edmund de Waal, Photo Ole Akhøj
• the burning now, installation view, CLAY Museum of Ceramic Art, Denmark, 2023 © Edmund de Waal, Photo Ole Akhøj

As children, we tend to imagine that the clouds are formed by the smoke belching out of the chimneys of an industrial town. A typical iconic sight of the past centuries. The urban sites are often known by what they produce- both industrially and culturally. Neha Gawand Pullarwar, a ceramicist of repute from Mumbai, India, builds her clay narratives by finding and connecting such anecdotes between the industrious cities of Stoke on Trent and Mumbai as part of the British Ceramics Biennial (BCB) through a residency exchange program between the ICT (Indian Ceramic Triennale) and the BCB supported by the CWIT (Charles Wallace India Trust).

The residency programme was held between 18th August to 29th September 2023. Neha’s proposition was layered with artistic research, where she traced visual commonalities and factual connections between the two cities of industry and the people. In a broader sense, the artist is seen to classify the nuances of Trent’s ceramic histories and the social upheaval around the mill histories of Mumbai. Though each location is independent of their developments, the juxtaposition of the respective visuals and narratives triggers empathy toward the working class and the creative spirit each place ushers throughout their lived past. It becomes even more intriguing when Neha, as a ceramicist, recreates the visuals in clay by image transfer techniques and functional yet sculptural forms of the industry settings to manifest a sort of scaffolded installation hinting at the ongoing industrial operations and the life instances of the working-class heroes.

Neha shares a special relationship with the island city of Mumbai for having lived and witnessed the shifts and socio-political tensions between the working class and the business class. Her connection with colonial history is a major signifier owing to her art education at the Sir J J School of Art, Mumbai, an institution set up during the mid-nineteenth century aided by the leading Parsee merchant Jamshetji Jeejeebhoy. All these references become the point of departure for making her first set of works during the Trent residency, where she uses the Saggars as a frame to contextualize her narrative.

It begins with the choice of making Saggar forms. (Saggars are high-fired groggy forms used as containers, where the glazed pots are kept inside to protect from the dust of the coal that was used as fuel for firing.) Saggars from the Industrial Age have all become collectibles and are seldom found lying around in ceramic factories. It became pertinent to revise her original idea of using available saggars as a wall and produce some by adapting to the eventual outcome. Perhaps this decision informs her work of the shifts that have happened at Stoke-on-Trent, where social and geographical changes like the packhorse road to the proposition of canals in the city to the railways, and finally, the shutdown of factories or shift of designing and manufacturing to China.

In contrast, the city of Mumbai (Bombay) that changed hands as land given to the British Crown as dowry and eventually the establishment of a major administrative and trading port city and unison of the seven islands into reclamation land underwent innumerable socio-political changes, including the developments in the creative sectors. Neha brings the elements of the labor movement of the 20th century as a marker of a social change symbolized by the red fist, an icon of resistance marked by the nine-month-long Great Bombay Textile Mill strike of 1982. The colored threads indicate the vivid textile trade of the period. Today, the Maharashtra state government is forming a textile museum on the site of Indu Mills- one of the prime sites of protests that even today carries some of the machine remnants from the olden days. The image transfers she uses are of the historic photographs where the merchants from the 19th century are seen resting after the cotton is being weighed, the women at work in a textile unit, the interior views of the ruined mills with machinery in situ, humongous group of workers striking on the streets. Apart from raising questions about the disturbing past of the city and its politics, it ushers a sense of disharmony toward the industrious -creative attitude of the city.

In building the juxtaposition, Neha explores the anecdotes of Trent’s active years where, on the days of kiln firing, the entire city skyline would be turned invisible owing to the smoke belched out of the factory chimneys. A ceramicist exploring the world capital of ceramics notes on one of the visits how she sourced ‘soot’ as a material for one of the works: “During one of my visits to the exhibition venue at all Saint Church, I was told about soot from the loose wooden floorings of the church. So, I carefully sourced some of it and used it to sprinkle and glaze the cloud-work, representing the change of the sky from the industrial time till today.”

Amongst other works forming part of her sculptural installation are a miner-white and black porcelain hinting at the stature of the mining community, and the photo-transfers of the Saggar makers lend a comparative thought to looking at a sort of nostalgia and inquiry of the habitational constraints of the working class at Trent. Drawing parallels from the hazardous environments of industrial setups, one of the commonalities between Mumbai’s textile mills and the workers at the ceramic factories would be the handling and overexposure to the toxic materials used in the productions. Neha observes that ‘the young boys, of 12 to 14 years working in the factories as bottom knockers and concern of their mothers’ to avoid the employment of their children in chemically toxic environments that would shorten their lives.’ is a common and alarming matter that would demand setting up sustainable and healthy working environments.

“The dippers who would glaze the pots for several hours of the day. The glaze used was of lead, which would be poisonous to the health. Sometimes, they even worked with injuries to their fingers where direct exposure to wounds to lead would prove harmful.”

On a lighter note, she explores the iconic geographical changes of Macclesfield Canal – bridge and representation of the Gladstone pottery bottle kilns, and a ceramic map of the important ceramic sites at Trent brings about a curious sense of proposed nostalgia toward the place- a creative city.

In summary, the installation becomes a set of notes from different yet similar industrialized references that, by juxtaposition, present an aesthetic inquiry into the histories of the two cities, Stoke on Trent and Mumbai.

The residency in cumulation has allowed the artist to look at lateral creative models where her primary area of micro-architecture, social spheres, and industrial production in the wake of global eco-consciousness and material consumption.

The prime learning and direction for the artist, as she states, “This first international residency engaged me with understanding historical, cultural, social, and psychological factors of the present. Reasons for development and changes in the current situations. This enriching experience showed me how to introspect about my roots and the whole idea of presenting the past (irrespective of its glorious or the story of abolishing the inhuman practices for the betterment of society) in different ways. The impact or remains of a certain industry on the present generation and how people perceive it is what I intend to look forward to manifesting. How and where the stories of the past would lead is the inquiry keeps me invested in the thought process.”

Nikhil Purohit is an artist, art administrator, and founder of the organization Faandee Arts Archival Documentation and Research based in Mumbai.

Installation views by Jenny Harper

The International Competition at Aveiro Museum

The 16th International Biennale of Artistic Ceramics, supported by Aveiro City Council and backed by a highly committed (and very female) team, opened its doors on October 28, 2023. With 565 entries received, the event is shaping up to be a great success. It’s a record for this fast-evolving Biennale, marked by an ever-stronger determination to open up to the international scene and to be ever more demanding in terms of quality, and which in return has managed to prove itself attractive with its three prize packages worth €13,000 / €8,000 and €4,000 respectively.

A jury of five people chosen by the Biennale organizers was set up:
• Alda Tomas, Creative Director and Product Designer, Vista Alegre, Portugal.
• Erika Sütő, artist designer, International Ceramic Studio of Kecskemét, Hungary.
• Xavier Morant Vardejo, City of Manises and from the Ceramic Cities Grouping AEuCC and AeCC, Spain.
• Rui Silva, Associate Professor, Department of Ceramic Materials and Techniques, University of Aveiro, Portugal
• Stéphanie Le Follic-Hadida, art historian and Vice President of the International Academy of Ceramics, France.

The jury met twice to select the 84 finalists and then to award the prizes and mentions of Honor. Given its history and geographical location, I fully appreciated the decisive role that Portugal could play in the coming decades. This 16th Biennale has received entries from every continent, from Latin America, of course, but also from Africa and Oceania. This is an invaluable natural attraction that few countries can boast of.

The organizing team from the City of Aveiro’s Museums and Heritage Department brought together a wide range of profiles within the jury. Artists, teachers, association leaders, managers, art historians, and others represented the full spectrum of ceramic art and design activities. Some paid particular attention to style and craftsmanship, while others focused on ideas and inventiveness. It has to be said, however, that quality work always manages, as if by magic, to synthesize all these expectations. I think I can speak for everyone when I say how high the overall standard of this latest edition of the Aveiro Biennale was. It wasn’t easy to choose three winners. After many pointless stratagems and a great deal of passionate, well-argued discussion, we were able to reach a consensus without difficulty so that we could all converge on what we sincerely and objectively believe to be indisputable.

This is how the three splendid 2023 prizes were chosen:
• 1st prize: PAULA BASTIAANSEN (Netherlands), “Balanced in red” (3 elements), 90 x 90 x 23 cm, whose lightness and sense of movement essentially contradict the ceramic idea.
• 2nd prize: HIDEMI TOKUTAKE (Japan), “Grow”, 55 x 53 x 63 cm, whose timeless sculptural approach combines the complexity of its interior volume with the sensitive application of colour.
• 3rd prize: MING-MIAO Ko (Taiwan), “Handle with care“ (installation), porcelain, 350 x 40 cm, which tackles the issue of gender from the angle of sex toys and surgery.

Six mentions of Honor were then awarded to :
• CHISATO YASUI (Japan) for “Profiles 6 and 10”, two volumes of a constructivist nature, but combining structure and pictorial subtlety.
• JIAO MENG (China) for his floor installation “We are all Alice, ” drawing inspiration from oral tradition and ‘para-realism’.
• LISA BARBOSA (Portugal), only 25 years old, for her floor installation “Que nasçam flores”, which bears witness to the fires that hit Portugal hard last summer.
• MARIA ORIZA (Spain), for her refined and innovative porcelain wall sculpture, “Hipatia”.
• RICUS SEBES (Germany), for his highly virtuoso work in enameled crystallisations, “Amphora” and “The other side of light.”
• SHAO LEI (China), for his aerial and sensitive structure, “Slow-moving Shadow”.

However, the overriding feeling after the winners were announced was one of regret at not being able to honour other works, other equally remarkable approaches. On a podium, the step that separates the whole from the nothing often seems frighteningly unfair. And yet, we all left Aveiro with our minds nourished by the many artistic discoveries we had made and impatient to set up new exhibition projects to promote them. The artists presented at Aveiro touch on a wide range of artistic issues in contemporary ceramics: structural issues around volume, surface, glazes, pictoriality, hollowing out… and societal issues around ecology or gender. This 16th Aveiro Ceramics Biennale perfectly reflects the diversity of stylistic approaches and thematic obsessions in contemporary ceramics, which are also, in many ways, those of contemporary art.

Text by the Jury’s President, Stéphanie Le Follic-Hadida, Vice-President of the International Academy of Ceramics (extract from the biennale’s catalog)

Connecting Exhibitions

Cecília de Sousa: The Poetics of Erosion at the Former Captaincy Gallery

Cecília de Sousa stands out as one of the most important names among the artists who dedicated themselves to ceramic production in the second half of the 20th century. Her work is endowed with a poetic expression of line and color, gaining a bigger identity and accentuating the progressively material contrast of her objects. Few artists worked ceramics to the extent that Cecília de Sousa did. She introduced time, erosion, the memory of creations and archaic civilizations into her creations, building pieces that seem almost archaeological, testimonies of forgotten ages and ignored cultures. Such is the work of Cecília de Sousa, a ceramist who, starting from the logic and aesthetics of her time, discovered, in her journey, the path of timelessness and who now makes herself known in the Gallery of the Old Captaincy of Aveiro, part of the XVI International Biennial of Ceramics of Aveiro.

Ellen Van Der Woude: Fragile Paradise at the Art Nouveau Museum

“Fragile Paradise” explores the unique beauty of nature, the rich variety of textures and forms, its rhythm and composition, and its vulnerability. It also refers to the world’s fragile relationship with nature and our interdependence and dependence on biodiversity. It’s a frightening prospect that humanity may potentially destroy all of nature’s wonders. The artworks are a reflection of the artist’s close observation and connection to the natural world, its resilience, and fragility while also acknowledging lost links between humanity and nature. Connecting with nature is vital for people’s psychological and physical well-being and is key to fostering greater understanding and respect for the natural world. May you be inspired by visiting this exhibition to slow down, reconnect with nature, and contribute to its conservation.

Juana Fernández: Paisajes Entertejidos at the Former Train Station

“The work process is intuitive; I develop series where I experiment with materials and shapes with different approaches that generate diversity of work. I start with a simple element in which the repetition of the gesture and the fingerprint of the fingers are visible and remain as a record of the process. From these elements, grouping them, I build the pieces. The slow and paused time it requires is also incorporated, is contained in its conformation, and becomes clear in its structure.

I explore the properties of clay, stoneware or porcelain. Ephemeral architectures, small habitats, shelters, nests, and shells are pieces built with thin blades of a mixture of porcelain and paper that present a fragile and delicate aspect. “Paisajes de Humo” is a work in which I experiment with the firing process, in which fire and chance decide the traces of smoke that are printed on the surfaces. Oxides and pigments add color, an element present in much of my work due to its power and ability to provoke and communicate sensations.”

Baltic Current at the City Museum

Exhibition curators: Valentins Petjko [LV], Aivars Baranovskis [LV], Agné Šemberaite [LT], Pille Kaleviste [EE]

Galvanized by the Latvia Ceramics Biennale, the creative current from the Baltic States has reached our partners in Portugal as an exhibition exchange project between the Latvia Ceramics Biennale and the International Biennial of Artistic Ceramics of Aveiro. As a significant event in the Latvia Ceramics Biennale programme, running this year with the title “Troubled Waters”, “The Baltic Current” features professional artists from the three Baltic States selected by a team of curators aiming to present the current situation in Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian ceramic art.

The leading actors in the Baltic Ceramics field (the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Ceramics, the Estonian Ceramics Association and the Lithuanian Artists’ Association) actively promote contemporary ceramics in the region and have had intense previous cooperation in joint exhibitions and other projects. Each country’s shortlist includes several generations, featuring respected veterans who have pioneered new trends and developments and made a lasting impact on the discipline alongside up-and-coming artists just emerging on the scene. Most of the exhibition participants, however, represent the middle generation who completed their ceramic studies after the break-free from the Soviet regime. The artists promise the viewer a rich and engaging exhibition experience, with a tantalizing glimpse into the Baltic mentality and ceramic art currents of the day.

Excerpt from the biennale’s catalog. The Baltic Current exhibition is on view until December 31, 2023

Laure Delamotte-Legrand: Stone Sea at the City Museum

“All starts with the encounter with a site, a valley in Normandy, with its cliffs and rocks sculpted by the sea and a beach at their feet. Wonder for what nature is able to create and which is disappearing. So why not keep the memory of it with the molding of this beach as a «vanishing point» and keep its imprint? The beach changes with each tide, and the material moves and shifts, a utopian undertaking to confront this invisible migration of the elements, these unstable landscapes, fascinating as well as disturbing.

To this history of the mineral matter migration was coupled the one of humans and the one of ceramics history – the influences between civilizations and the crossing of cultures. This project, which has been developing for ten years, pushes me to travel. I first went north along the coast for a residency at the famous Royal Delft factory in the Netherlands. The coastline to the south took me to the imposing Vista Alegre factory near Aveiro in Portugal.

Whatever the country or the place, my approach remains the same with the starting postulate of the curiosity of the encounter. The encounter with people and with places, with their history, their cultures, their gestures.”

IAC Portuguese Artists – Collective exhibition at Morgados Da Pedricosa Gallery

Many Portuguese artists/ceramists members and a unique exhibition that presents the individual selection of each author, highlighting their creative identity and their signature in a challenging and demanding space in its double dimension: International Biennale of Artistic Ceramics of Aveiro and Morgados da Pedricosa Gallery.

Participating artists: Ana+Betânia, Carlos Enxuto, Heitor Figueiredo, João Carqueijeiro, Sofia Beça, Xana Monteiro, Yola Vale

Binomial University of Lisbon Faculty of Fine Arts Collective Exhibition at the Misericórdia Cloister

The center of the Cloister of Santa Casa da Misericórdia is open, in an immediate connection with the cosmos, as well as with interior introspection and reflection. Around these ideas arises the Binomial, which focuses on the ideas of interiority, exteriority, verticality or horizontality, as accesses to this complex understanding. The works reflect these concepts, express these dimensions from the formal point of view, establishing inevitable dialogues with the architectural space.

Participating artists: Ana Franco Neto, Andreia Gomes Pereirinha, Anja Hallek, Bárbara Fernandes, Bárbara Jasmins, Beatriz De Almeida Pisa, Catarina Farinha, Daphne Klagkou, David Arraia, Francisca Martins e Pablo Díaz, Inês Duarte Justo, Inês Teles, Irene de Vilder, Isabel Bentes dos Santos, Jéssica Pinto, Mafalda André, Maria Henrique, Marta Galvão Lucas, Noah Thor Alhalel, Paco Moreno, Paola Quiñonez, Pedro Dionísio, Vera de Serpa Soares

Curva Atelier: Poetry of the Form. The Journey of the Word at Atlas Aveiro

The International Biennale of Artistic Ceramics of Aveiro has been taking place since 1989. For the school community to actively participate in the Biennale, the project “Biennale goes to School. The Poetry of Form” unites the written word to the ceramics by the hand of the artists residing in Curva Atelier, letting the words also be shaped and expressed by the plasticity of the clay. Schools worked on the theme “The Journey of the Word”. The Word is a sound, and it is also a story, and it contains a whole world. When it first gains body, its support is ceramic. And everything changes… With a body of clay, the Word travels farther and transcends generations. Pottery began the path of the Word and all we want to say and communicate to the future. What about us? What do we want to say to the Future? Let’s use the Word. And let’s get the message through the hands of the pottery. The clay again transformed into a vehicle of Art, a thruster of ideas through generations.

Contact
bienalceramica@cm-aveiro.pt

Photos by Miguel Cordovil

The Siliceous Award for Ceramic Excellence exhibition, a premier biennial event of Ceramic Arts Queensland, one of Australia’s oldest arts organizations, was not just a showcase of excellence in Australian ceramics. It also highlighted the vast depth and breadth of contemporary ceramic practices. Celebrating its seventh edition this year, the 2023 Award has been the most impressive to date.

With the primary criterion for the exhibition being excellence and only a few other technical requirements, it encouraged a broad range of entrants. The sixty-four finalists featured were from around Australia, with full-time career artists and enthusiasts in the mix.

The exhibition was held in the Ipswich Community Gallery, a converted, decommissioned church located in the center of Ipswich (a short drive west of the capital city of Brisbane), and ran from 13 October until 5 November 2023. The Community Gallery is supported by the Ipswich City Council and the adjacent Ipswich Art Gallery to provide a low-cost and supported gallery space for artists and art groups. The gallery is a thoughtful adaptation of a historic building and provides a versatile and practical space with its high ceilings and white walls. This gallery is a model of direct support by the government for the arts, which others should readily adopt.

Ipswich was chosen as the host city for this exhibition due to its historical significance to clay in Australia. It has been a site of clay mining, manufacturing, and artistry. Of particular note, it was the location of the studio and woodfired kiln of world-renowned Australian ceramicist Gywn Hanssen Pigott.

Thankfully, the display of work eschewed the more recent fashionable trend of jumbling work together on the table. This was especially appreciated as there was no overarching and unifying theme. Each piece was honored with its own plinth, allowing space for the work to be viewed from all angles and reveal its secrets as quietly or grandly as it commanded. There was a minimalist approach to labeling with reliance on the catalog for details.

A wide variety of work was on display, including sculptural non-functional pieces, functional ware, woodfired work, stoneware, porcelain, pit-fired work, and saggar; sadly, no Raku work was included. All the works were fine examples of their kind, with a clear imprint of the individual artist.

Two main awards were given – the overall winner for the Siliceous Award for Ceramic Excellence and the inaugural Gwyn Hanssen Pigott Wood Fired Ceramics Award. Judging this competition would have been challenging, but it was approached with professionalism and expertise by the esteemed Dr Rebecca Coates, current director of Monash University Museum of Art and former Director of Shepparton Art Museum. Under Dr. Coates’ stewardship, the latter institution has become recognized for the significance of its ceramics collection and an iconic regional arts precinct.

Astrid Salomon‘s work ‘Dark Fruit’ was given the major Siliceous Award for Ceramic Excellence. The judge, Dr. Coates, described the style as ‘organic modernism.’ The overall shape resembles a classic ceramic form but is bulbous and resembles ripe fruit, with the surface broken by sharp geometric protrusions. The glaze is somber but delicately textural and almost metallic. Salomon’s ceramic works are highly personal, and concerned with creating physical manifestations of emotional states. The piece ‘Dark Fruit’ is part of a larger body of work exploring the theme of resilience.

Salomon has taken an ‘old-school’ approach to developing her own glaze palette rather than using commercially prepared glazes. She has been the fortunate recipient of expert mentorship from Hilary Barta, a retired ceramic artist and teacher. Their fortuitous meeting resulted from a Facebook marketplace advert for studio equipment. While a relative newcomer to the medium of ceramics, Salomon is an experienced artist of many decades, working in varied fields of photography, film, and painting. Her photographer’s eye lends itself to a sculptural approach to form with her work exploring the relationship between volume and negative space.

Australian Wood Firers United sponsored the inaugural Gwyn Hanssen Pigott Award for Wood Fired Ceramics. Wood firing is a collaborative, labor-intensive process requiring resources, a strong community, and expertise. It is delightful to see such a strong representation of the craft directly resulting from a thriving community.

Ray Cavill’s work ‘The Fire and the Flood II’ was awarded the Gwyn Hanssen Pigott Award. This work speaks of place, namely his home in Lismore, New South Wales, which in recent history has endured natural disasters brought by fire and flood. It is a solidly crafted piece with gravitas and imbues bold contrasts. It shows the delicate glaze details as it floods over the form, highlighting its landscape. A row of delicate ‘dragon’s tears’ – the poetic name for drops of glaze forever captured by the work during the intense firing process – delicately slip over the edge. Other handsome and notable woodfired works are Michael Hoare’s’ Wood Fired Cairn #2′ and veteran Barbara Campbell-Allen’s ‘River Pearls – Ruby Gorge.

Highly Commended awards were given to Csongvay Blackwood for the work ‘Fold the Line, Version 7’; Euan Craig for ‘Igusa Hidasuki Tea Bowl’; Simone Fraser for ‘Surfaced Tensions II’; Lauren Joffe for ‘Hold’; Jennifer Oh for ‘The Long Tether’; and Ruby Yeh for ‘Meditation on San Zi Jing’.

There were several other works worthy of special mention. Jennifer Conroy-Smith’s ‘The Space Within (Inhale)’ is a delicate and sublime demonstration of exceptional technical ability. It is a visually intriguing work that thoroughly interrogates concepts and techniques simultaneously. Avi Amesbury’s ‘Taken’ is a direct, relevant interpretation of environment, capitalism, and materials through the humble type of vessel – the bowl. Diminutive is size; it quietly makes its point.

Laura Cope and Claudia De Salvo’s collaborative work ‘Artefact and Fantasy’ is a reinterpretation of classic ceramic shapes in playful tableaux. ‘Resilient Beauty #2’ by Jason Fitzgerald is a visually striking manifestation of the personal which challenges norms in ceramics. Shannon Garson’s narrative ‘Whale Migration’, set over three vessels, reveals a deep appreciation of the environment with a sophisticated exploration of surface design.

Bonnie Hislop’s ‘Someone Somewhere May Be Having Fun’ is a colorful and playful salve for a bruised human soul. ‘Spirit Dog’ by Kalyanii Holden is distinctly Australian in style, and while a tribute to her beloved pet, it avoids the maudlin sentimental.

Concurrent with the exhibition was a community program funded by the Regional Arts Development Fund and the Ipswich City Council. The program included a floor talk with Jane du Rand, a local Ipswich artist and Siliceous finalist, a rock and ash glaze lecture by Dr Steve Harrison, a pop-up studio for wheel-throwing, and guided tours of the exhibition. The program was a valuable extension to the formal exhibition by adding depth to the experience for visitors, encouraging participation in the arts, and cultivating future makers.

The exhibition featured accomplished artists who all thoroughly engaged with the medium in their own very personal way resulting in an exciting and dynamic collection of contemporary Australian ceramics. The exhibition was a representation and celebration of a mature, creative, and diverse ceramics community. That a volunteer-run arts group produced an exhibition of such a high standard without corporate sponsorship is a testament to the strength, vibrancy, and commitment of the ceramic community in Australia. The next Siliceous Award will be in 2025 and will be keenly anticipated by all in the clay community.

About the author
Stephanie Henricks is an emerging ceramic artist based in Brisbane/Meanjin, Australia.

Captions

• Installation photos by Talitha Rice
• Astrid Salomon. Photo supplied by the artist
• Ray Cavill. Photo by Talitha Rice (edited)
• Avi Amesbury. Photo provided by the artist
• Barbara Campbell-Allen. Photo provided by the artist
• Euan Craig. Photo provided by the artist
• Bonnie Hislop. Photo provided by the artist
• Jason Fitzgerald. Photo provided by the artist
• Lauren Joffe. Photo provided by the artist
• Csongvay Blackwood. Photo provided by the artist
• Jennifer Oh Photo provided by the artist
• Jennifer Conroy Smith. Photo provided by the artist
• Kalyanii Holden. Photo provided by the artist
• Michael Hoare. Photo provided by the artist
• Simone Fraser. Photo by Greg Piper
• Laura Cope and Claudia De Salvo. Photo provided by the artists
• Ruby Yeh. Photo provided by the artist
• Shannon Garson. Photo by Richard Muldoon

The first thing I thought about when I first saw works by Jennifer McCandless were active notions of persona and personality. What makes her exhibition Run Amok at A.I.R. Gallery different is this very fact—the show is concept-based—and not center-staged upon materiality. This exhibition is composed primarily of figural works, and if they are not straight-out renderings of the human/figural body, then they are creatures and monsters that have sprung from the underworld. These are statements to define personality and persona and to make statements about what that means from a woman’s perspective.

In a post-funk and with a post-Arneson mannerism, McCandless’s ceramic and mixed media renderings signal the truths that can be distinguished through the imagination, depicting these magical figurations of both substance and innuendo.

Persona is a concept tastefully conceived through a reflection of inner individuality and an outward sense of self. Persona is a stratagem of identity in public, in this case, a ceramic sculpture that adopts a feminine perspective for a social statement, which at first may appear to be a fictional character. Yet there is always the inner world of deep personal feeling present.

As ceramic parodies, these constructions lampoon our quotidian patterns and expectations, but they also can become caricatures of a dark, unconscious side while performing on a very conscious but satirical platform.

Persona is at the heart of her character development. But in order to develop persona, McCandless shows us that she is thinking extensively about each character that she portrays. Who are they? Where do they come from? What do they want? What do they think about? What are their fears and ambitions? Personae, as a collective, is built around these conditions, yet persona, individually expressed, also comes with a “back story” for each construction.

Together, these works offer/suggest a social critique of our collective being but also question how we individually relate to one another and interpret the world at large.

These are works that champion creative freedom and reflect the artists’ personality and experiences. Imbued in them are a sense of humor, a confrontation to autobiographical references identifying on a personal level the social, political, and existential references that may convey a more serious undertone. Whimsical contents can mask a darker or, perhaps better yet, a more critical subject or element, eroding the distinction between the figure’s exterior and interior meaning.

It was, in fact, Carl Jung who first developed the notion of persona and, as such, was engaged in the task of discovering and constructing the archetypal architecture underlying human experience. McCandless invokes this Jungian notion as it means seeing through the connective, rather impersonal structure and dynamics of the unconscious. As Jung says, “The persona is a complicated system of relations between the individual consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual.“¹

For McCandless, this is what creates her “magical realism” as both raw material and the finished product of her imagination. This is to see how fantasy is creating reality, how reality is creating fantasy. These compositions are the metaphor of an “as-if” fiction; both are a form of being. From an internal animus to ‘anima mundai’, these works depict a back-and-forth shift from her personal mirror to an open window of the world.

Given the demands of everyday life, the obligations to family and friends, the chores, errands and logistics, and social parameters we must deal with, the idea of lending ourselves “spare time” to gaze into the make-believe world of McCandless may seem a bit jocular irreverent. But as renderings of fictional characters who poke fun at social norms, these works invite their audience to explore real ideas, issues, or possibilities using an otherwise imaginary setting, perhaps something similar to reality but totally distinct from it.

Even though we are gazing into a world of what she calls “magical realism”, we can, as spectators, see her expressions of the trials and tribulations of daily life, the accompanying vicissitudes of hope and fears, and nuances of social dynamics rendered in these characters. This allows the viewers to experience life through a different narrative and thus see the world through a different lens. These offerings are valuable insights into how she sees the sometimes inordinate, dizzying, and immeasurable world we live in. What unfolds in these characters of hers is an expression of the social personalities of present-day Funk.

INTERVIEW

On the Thursday before the opening of her exhibition, Jennifer McCandless and I met at AIR Gallery in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn. We decided then to construct a question-and-answer exchange, speaking more specifically about some of the works.

First I want to say “Congratulations!” on the show. I always think it’s important to acknowledge a solo exhibition as a milestone in the career of an artist.

Thank you! I am delighted to be installed here in the A.I.R. Gallery. It happens to be the oldest feminist gallery in the country and honors the specific vision of the female artist. My gallery space here is compact, with many works from the last few years. It’s actually similar to my studio space in Burlington, VT., a total menagerie of ideas.

Right! I’m hoping this exchange will give us an opportunity to understand the specific nature of your work and the influences and motivations behind it. This work, ‘Western God Trying to Convince Other Gods They Never Existed,’ seems to me to be a very important work in the show. Could you tell me a little more about what’s going on in this piece?

This will actually be really fun to explain; however, I probably should mention a little bit about the context of my personal background. I was raised by two ex-Catholic parents who enjoyed questioning everything. However, at times, my parents also possessed a very dark sense of humor. It seemed to not make sense to me as a small girl that there was a God who looked like us somewhere up in the clouds, along with the collaborating premise that men were made first and women sprang from them. I saw that women were blamed for the expulsion from the garden and consequently were to be tamed and made to submit. At the forefront of this work, I’ve placed the “Western God”, which in my mind is depicted as the real God. The other surrounding gods he is lecturing to are from all sorts of places and time periods, many much older than the “professorial” Western God. Depicted here are Bes (Egyptian God of childbirth, music, and merriment), Monkey King, Sun Wukong (Chinese), and Tlaloc (Aztec God of Rain). They are gathered in a surrounding classroom-like grouping, and they find the argument amusing. So here I am poking fun at that notion, while on a more serious side, this piece is engaging in a statement about equality, where there is no inferiority to each other.

You previously mentioned to me the influence of the Belgian painter James Ensor (1860-1949). He was such a fantastic character in his day. Not one who could be considered an “outsider” artist but so idiosyncratic that it is hard to place him in the mainstream canon of art history. Ensor seems so very pertinent to your work. Can you explain how you came about finding him? Was this what one might call a “eureka moment”, or were you pondering his paintings for a while? How does he connect with you?

My parents loved Symbolism, and so I remember seeing some small traveling pieces by Ensor early on before I became an artist. My Dad, also an artist, would often bring us to the Detroit Institute of the Arts, where, as a child, I first discovered Ensor’s work. They felt so much more human than the other work at the museum, even though they depicted people masked. The use of the paint/line and blurring to describe emotion was riveting; I guess I’ve always felt like I don’t really understand people, and it scares me that people can seem safe but hide their own monsters underneath. I know not everyone is monstrous, but sometimes I have a tough time discerning. I know also that I have grappled with my own monsters, so there’s that too. I’m not above it.

I used to sit with that painting ‘Christ’s Entry into Brussels’ regularly when I was getting my BFA at Otis/Parsons. It’s a gigantic painting, and now it has its own room in the Getty Museum, which it totally deserves! It’s my favorite piece by him, and it changed my life, honestly. The idea that each person has a secret life reality as well as a public face, that we all share something profound that is not often probed. That’s where I like to explore and dwell and find connection to the viewer. This is present in most of my pieces.

I’ve read that Ensor was interested in the notion of masked figures and especially the carnival atmosphere that annually was paraded through his home country of Belgium, which he often was witness to. The masked personae became a way to project his innermost thoughts. Your figural works are projecting real-world feelings as well. In your renderings, would you say you are using some sensibilities of “a mask” (as an underlying psychology), perhaps just in different contexts? I mean, you are speaking about a “secret life” and conveying “a public face.” There is always an inner and an outer.

I would be concerned if people thought the Gods piece were really figures wearing masks. The connection between the Gods piece and Ensor’s works is in the idiosyncratic and endless inventiveness of the human mind. It is also in our search for community and connection. As I see it, this is driven by our fear of death.

Like him, the use of bright, fun colors attracts the viewer, and then one realizes there is a possibility of chaos and darkness underneath. I think there is magic that happens in a work of art when it engages in a “pluralism” of this sort. It is a fetishization of the subject in space. The overwhelming figures in the Ensor piece and the number of gods in my piece create an energy and wonder that draws the viewer in to explore, interpret and think. The bright colors signal safety, yet there is an invitation. Like Ensor, but in my own way, I employ this fetishization in order to create an inherent overwhelming energy. For instance, there are some very intense surface treatments in my work. For both Ensor and myself, it is the human condition that connects our work. It ushers in this mystery of ever truly knowing oneself and the challenge of knowing others in the community.

I wanted to ask you first about the work titled ‘Sweat’ and what that piece really means to you.

“Sweat” came to me as a ceramics sculpture teacher during the pandemic. I was watching the vitality of my students slowly retreat, suffering so much loss from the isolation. With my two children, I was also acutely aware of their loss. So, for this piece, I used colors oozing from the head to represent the loss of their childhood vigor. I studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where we were constantly questioned about the marriage of our form, materials, and the way we used them. This was alongside the content of the work. As a matter of consequence, I will introduce elements in my work that are mixed media when they are best suited to match the idea of a piece.

There are also the works of Bob Arneson, who loom large for you in terms of influence. Notably, he often worked with self-portraiture to project his means of identity and his innermost feelings. In those cancer portraits that Arneson did in the last years of his life, there is that “feeling of disintegration,” as you say, where he distorted the physical figural component of the image. Your work ‘Sweat’ appears to morph the human head into a Kafka-esque manner of something other than what the human body really is.

I love the irreverence of Arneson and his total exploitation (in a good way) of what clay can do, for instance, the self-referencing of himself as kiln man, his head splatting upside down, his portrayal of himself as a bad dog who just left a mess on the gallery floor, or his feelings of disintegration in his later work when he had cancer. They are very potent images. Humor, to me, is a pathway into a person’s heart, a way that people can safely go to dark places and maybe bring some levity to the stuff that is hard in life. I like going there and sharing that with people. That experience completes the work for me, …the sharing of it.

What about ‘King Cedric: Eater of Mutton? That’s also a fairly “distorted” comical portrait.

In ‘King Cerdic, Eater of Mutton’ and other works in that series (there are five patriarchs), I use the qualities of the clay, the lumpiness and cracking, to depict the demise of patriarchy. Yes, Arneson sometimes depicted himself as disintegrating. He opened those doors for me, and I walked through them and came out the other end. However, I do have a very different point of view and life experience. For instance, there are pieces in the exhibition that address drug addiction, loss of habitat, body dysmorphia, as well as a reimagining of mythology concerning women. That would be a big difference from Bob Arneson and James Ensor.

As another dimension to your work and concerns, I’d like you to say a few things about ‘Baby Boomer Bad Ass Pictured with Patriarchal Shoulder Parrot’. That also possesses some very explicit undertones and substantial cultural ramifications.

In the Baby Boomer piece, I am both trying to honor the women who fought on every front for equality, especially in the late 60’s and 70’s. They brought about real change in women’s lives. I feel that indebtedness. It is my good fortune that I have been able to live the life I have, which I owe to them. My mother raised me to fight for my place and not accept being looked upon as inferior. For me, it’s been a lifetime of poking the bear through my art. I hope that’s what comes across in these works: the commonality of experience. Women have not been fully appreciated in art history. What we go through and how we see things allows me to laugh at what otherwise is eternally upsetting. In this regard, my work is a personal coping mechanism. It’s a bonus when this statement reaches into the public domain. This completes the work to make someone laugh and groan at the same time.

Doug Navarra is a visual artist who has an extensive background in working with clay. He lives in Hudson Valley, New York.

Jennifer McCandless: Run Amok is on view at A.I.R. Gallery, New York, between October 14 and November 12, 2023.

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Eva Pelechová: Selected works, 2015-2021

Slow Down Meaning – An oblique discussion of the art of Eva Pelechová

By Kryštof Hejný

Over the past 10+ years, Czech ceramicist and designer Eva Pelechová has honed two visually distinct modes of expression. Despite their difference, they both develop a cloud of meaning that finds its edge in the eye of the beholder. The dynamic between the beholder and the work is key, then, for the “message” to take the shape of a singular thought and thus presumes of them a behavioral adjustment. For the loop to close and the message to unfold itself, it needs the sense of time flowing (reading unnecessarily into the employed communication strategy, one ponders if Pelechová’s experience with performance art has anything to do here).

Pelechová often chooses to work at the outer limits of scale. Thus, the pieces, be it solitary meditations on materiality or groupings denoting sequences of change, attain a quality of spatial presence akin to that of a person. Tacit monumentality here is a device too – through it, every interaction begins with a question. According to the author, the work “attacks the irrational part of one’s brain” with the aim to situate one’s consciousness where rational comprehension and natural development meet.

Nevertheless, it is not a dialogue that ensues. Instead of an interrogation, the work turns the questions back at the beholder. Facilitating function of language breaks down. Exchange through duplication, association, synthesis, and reflection of untethered meanings shows cognitive structures and their semantic codes as permeable, conductive, open, yet opaque.

The more material-centric vein of Pelechová’s work produces objects that consist of coiled shells that rupture and slide across each other, revealing pools and streams of igneous, gritty, and glossy substances. At times, the shell can become fully encrusted in partially vitrified homogeneous grain. The composition of these pieces (chamotte clay, diturvit, silica sand, and glass frit) remains fully legible and, more often than not, melded only partially.

When bound to a material, structures and codes allow for qualitative shifts to take place under the right conditions (in the kiln), by which immanent meanings become apparent. As only the boundaries of given material suggest the location of points of no return in processes of actualizing the potentiality of a subject (in this case, an artwork’s manufacture), Pelechová remains aware of such boundaries of the material elements of her work and manipulates them skillfully as added metastructural signifiers. In an effort to bear the structure’s complexity, the artist as well as the beholder can employ both metaphorical and indeed physical tools with which to poke, chip and cut at the work, analysing its contents or layout, whereby analysis becomes yet another change-inducing part of the metastructure.

It is characteristic of Pelechová’s approach to analysis that she applies it methodically, almost with a dance-like rhythm, whether in sectioning pieces cold, figuring out group installations or pouring liquid slip in her auteur casting technique. Ceramics manufacture is built around repetition to achieve perfection. Techniques and their ordering are to a fired good what grammar and syntax are to speech. Both are fired by human action, which brings subject and motive. Every speech has patterns through which it perfects itself while slimming down its usability. Patterns, therefore, serve an autoreferential function. By appropriating broken molds regardless of their origin and casting the negative space on the inside, Pelechová has subverted a pattern. Later, she concentrated on the technique by developing a multilayered mold system of inset tubular or conical shapes, which she repeatedly casts while breaking off a piece of a mold from the inside out in between each casting. Ultimately, casts are organized in sequences. There lies the second mode of expression, further concentrated, analytical, yet possibly more empathetic.

Several processes unfold throughout Pelechová’s making, some of which remain hidden at the end. How she arrives at names for particular objects mimics her approach to the visual qualities of each piece. She holds color, body, glaze, and glass (i.e., transparency) separate while bringing forth a semiotic whole of an artwork. The method is associative and works as if thinking through language only by its structure and examining the interim findings simultaneously would lead to a charged, meaningful outcome. And just as visual clues stimulate response in the beholder, several well-chosen disparate words accompany most pieces to excite a feeling.

On encounter, the beholder apprehends a tide-like sense of semiotic capaciousness spirited in the distinct pieces. Therein, Pelechová strikes balance of the naturally occurring and the exact.

Essay by Kryštof Hejný, art historian and curator based in Prague, Czech Republic.

Photos by Tomáš Brabec

Captions

• Eva Pelechová, Celebration of Insignificance (detail), 2021, porcelain, metal frame, wood, 180 x 120 x 25 cm
• Eva Pelechová, Celebration of Insignificance, 2021, porcelain, metal frame, wood, 180 x 120 x 25 cm
• Eva Pelechová, A Fully Filled Crystal Lattice, 2018, chamotte clay, diturvit, silica sand, glass, 50 x 60 x 70 cm
• Eva Pelechová, Unstable Associations, 2018, pyrolusite clay, silica sand, glass, 70 x 30 x 50 cm
• Eva Pelechová, Quality of Missing, 2019, terracotta (objet trouvé), white clay, silica sand, glaze, soda, pigments, 50 x 50 x 50 cm
• Eva Pelechová, Everyday Archaeology, 2018, cast porcelain, metal frame, glass, 125 x 270 x 30 cm
• Eva Pelechová, Everyday Archaeology (detail), 2018, cast porcelain, metal frame, glass, 125 x 270 x 30 cm
• Eva Pelechová, 6% Humidity, 32 Tons, 2017, chamotte clay, silicon carbide, glaze, pigment, 70 x 30 x 50 cm
• Eva Pelechová, Soul Lake City, 2018, chamotte clay, silica sand, glass, pigment, 70 x 50 x 50 cm
• Eva Pelechová, Objective Point of View, 2018, chamotte clay, diturvit, silica sand, glass, 50 x 70 x 70 cm
• Eva Pelechová, Sugar Honey Darling, 2017, earthenware, silica sand, glass, 70 x 30 x 50 cm
• Eva Pelechová, Die Geschwollene Schönheit, 2017, porcelain, glaze, silica sand, 50 x 50 x 60 cm
• Eva Pelechová, Next Ex, 2017, earthenware, silicon carbide, glaze, 30 x 80 x 50 cm
• Eva Pelechová, The Whole Heaven, 2017, porcelain, silicon carbide, glaze, pigment, 60 x 20 x 40 cm
• Eva Pelechová, NC 000003, 2016, diturvit, 75 x 40 x 40 cm

Gotō Hideki: Contemporary Shino Ceramics, 2023

Abridged essay by Dr. Andreas Marks, Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese and Korean Art and Director of the Clark Center for Japanese Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Published on the occasion of “Goto Hideki, Higashida Shigemasa & Contemporary Expressions of Shino and Oribe” at Dai Ichi Arts

The principle of supply and demand and its relationship with innovative technologies has been understood by humans for centuries. This economic model was the impetus for the birth of several new ceramic traditions in sixteenth-century Japan. The demand originally came from a rise in interest and a shift in taste in the formal practice of preparing and drinking powdered green tea (chanoyu), commonly known as the Japanese tea ceremony. Chinese antiques were preferred until the tea masters Sen no Rikyū (1521–1591) and his student Furuta Shigenari (aka Furuta Oribe; 1544–1615) codified and revolutionized tea by turning away from prized, imported utensils in favor of domestically manufactured objects that embodied a rustic aesthetic.

A growing market for tea ceramics in Kyoto prompted changes in kiln construction. Kilns were initially enlarged (ōgama), and around 1600, a new type of kiln was developed that ascended the side of a slope (noborigama). This innovation improved heat efficiency, allowing for increased production with a more economic use of natural resources. In this context, two new wares emerged: Shino and Oribe.

Shino ware is known for its thick, creamy-white glaze, textured with small holes, frequently applied over abstract floral designs painted in iron-brown. A substyle of Shino ware is Nezumi, or “mouse-gray” Shino. The precise origins of Shino ware remain unknown, as do the names of their potters. The etymology of the terms is clouded, and even their taxonomy is debated. Some scholars argue that Shino is, in fact, a white-glazed variation of the famous copper green Oribe glaze, rather than a separate type of ceramic. Both wares flourished in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but after a few decades, they were abandoned, victims of changing tastes. It took two hundred years for Oribe ware to reappear in the late Edo period (1603–1868) and early Meiji era (1868–1912), finding a new market in which to thrive. It took another hundred years for Shino ware to be rediscovered.

Mino-native Arakawa Toyozō (1894–1985) returned to his home in 1930 and began researching the origins of Shino ware. After successful excavations revealed previously unknown facts about its history, Toyozō revived this classic style and was designated a Living National Treasure by the Japanese government in 1955 for his achievements. Toyozō’s own Shino tea bowls (chawan) are widely regarded as his most powerful works, which would influence the work of generations of ceramicists to come. The most exciting among these contemporary ceramicists are not satisfied with merely reproducing period styles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but rather infuse their own ideas and personal modes of visual expression to the highly technical medium. In this dynamic realm, an exceptional talent shines: Gotō Hideki, an emerging star in the realm of Shino.

Gotō Hideki is a contemporary artist who was born in a coastal town in Miyagi Prefecture in northeastern Japan before having relocated to the former Mino area in central Japan over two decades ago. Currently, he resides in Tajimi City, where he graduated in 1997 from the Department of Ceramics Science at the local technical high school. Following his graduation, Gotō began participating regularly in public exhibitions, and in 2012, his Shino tea bowl received the Encouragement Award at the nineteenth Mino Shōroku Tea Bowl Exhibition, a competitive event held until 2015 that garnered over two hundred submissions for each edition. In 2021, he earned an Honorable Mention at the prestigious twelfth International Ceramics Competition Mino.

Gotō regularly participates in prestigious solo and group exhibitions, primarily in Japan. Despite the fact that he now resides in an area surrounded by mountains, Gotō’s artistic forms draw inspiration from his upbringing in a seaside town, a place of sentimental value that he often longs for. He has named the wave-like or shell-shaped sculptural form he developed as “Shino Watatsumi,” which translates to “Shino Sea God,” a title deeply rooted in Japanese legends.

In Shinto mythology, Watatsumi represents the spirit (kami) of the sea and is an alternate name for the dragon deity Ryūjin. Gotō’s Watatsumi creations resemble seashells and capture the dynamic essence of the sea while maintaining a connection to the tradition of Shino ware. The large waves that crash onto cliff edges, sea foam, and riptides. He articulates this imagery in the forms he creates, which most recently manifest with curvilinear, layered textures. These elongated, stretched forms, characterized by their earthy textures and powerful ridges, exude a profound sense of tension. One might also envision his works as volcanic formations, with streaks of individually colored igneous rock emerging as the lava cooled following an eruption.

Gotō has a remarkable ability to make the soil communicate eloquently, pushing the boundaries of Shino ware into uncharted territory and rising to the challenge of crafting new and contemporary artworks.

Photos courtesy of Dai Ichi Arts Ltd.

Captions

• Goto Hideki 後藤秀樹 (b. 1973), Shino Watatsumi 海神, 2016, Feldspar over iron stoneware, With Original Signed Wooden Box, (h) 8.2” x (w) 16.8” x (d) 10.6”
• Goto Hideki 後藤秀樹 (b. 1973), Watatsumi No.2 海神, 2023, With Original Signed Wood Box, Stoneware, (h) 8.9″ x (w) 16″ x (d) 13.5″
• Goto Hideki 後藤秀樹 (b. 1973), Watatsumi No.1 海神, 2023, With Original Signed Wood Box, Stoneware, (h) 9.4″ x (w) 16.5″ x (d) 12″
• Goto Hideki 後藤秀樹 (b. 1973), Watatsumi No.3 海神, 2023, With Signed Wood Box, Stoneware, H8.7″ x W15″ x D11.2″
• Goto Hideki 後藤秀樹 (b. 1973), C-1 Nezumi (Gray) Shino Teabowl, 鼠志野茶盌, 2023, With Signed Wood Box, Stoneware, H4.7″ x W6.2″ x D5.5″
• Goto Hideki 後藤秀樹 (b. 1973), Watatsumi No.18 海神, 2023, With Signed Wood Box, Stoneware, H5.9″ x W15.1″ x D7.0″