The Ceramic Presence In Modern Art

Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name held at the Yale University Art Gallery, September 4, 2015-January 3, 2016.

This book investigates how British contemporary artists who work with clay have managed, in the space of a single generation, to take ceramics from niche-interest craft to the pristine territories of the contemporary art gallery. This development has been accompanied (and perhaps propelled) by the kind of critical discussion usually reserved for the 'higher' discipline of sculpture. Ceramics is now encountering and colliding with sculpture, both formally and intellectually. Laura Gray examines what this means for the old hierarchies between art and craft, the identity of the potter, and the character of a discipline tied to a specific material but wanting to participate in critical discussions that extend far beyond clay.

Ceramics is one of the most vibrant and engaging fields of contemporary British art. This lavishly illustrated book reviews the work of twenty-two artists and celebrates their contribution to its rich landscape. Written from a collector's point of view, it explores what contemporary ceramic objects can mean, what emotions they evoke and how artists draw upon different facets of the art and crafts worlds in their work. A vital visual and critical resource, Contemporary British Ceramics showcases British ceramics as a compelling interdisciplinary practice, attuned to the contemporary world. Featuring more than 280 images, it encourages readers to look beneath the surface, to discover the vibrant contribution that British ceramics makes to the broad field of contemporary art.

A beautifully illustrated look at how the acclaimed ceramicist draws on the postcolonial experience in her work Magdalene Odundo (b. 1950) is a Kenyan-born British ceramicist whose extraordinary works have been widely celebrated for their beauty and universality. Her studies of classical forms across many global traditions—from Greek and Chinese to Aztec and African—are evident in her intimate, evocative shapes. Sequoia Miller sheds light on the colonial and material traditions that inform Odundo's ceramics, showing how the artist deftly blends cultural and ethnographic sources to give expression to the postcolonial experience. This beautifully illustrated book discusses Odundo’s innovative method and puts her ceramic forms into conversation with global contemporary art. This close examination allows for a careful look at the artist’s works on paper—her prints and sketchbook drawings, published here in depth for the first time—demonstrating how they are a fundamental aspect of her creative practice. The book also features an in-depth Q&A with Odundo, in which she shares rare insights into her sense of self as an artist. With an incisive foreword by Susan Jefferies and illuminating contributions by Nehal El-Hadi, Elizabeth Harney, and Barbara Thompson, Magdalene Odundo provides new perspectives on an incomparable artist of our time, revealing the profound complexities of her work while deepening our understanding of modernism more broadly. Published in association with the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Toronto

This groundbreaking book is the first to provide a critical overview of the relationship between contemporary ceramics and curatorial practice in museum culture. Ceramic objects form a major part of museum collections, with connections to anthropology, archaeology and other disciplines that engage with the cultural and social history of humankind. In recent years museums have provided the impetus for cutting-edge artistic practice, either as a response to particular collections, or as part of exhibitions. But the question of how museums have staged contemporary ceramics and how ceramic artists respond to museum collections has not been the subject of published research to date. This book examines how ceramic artists have, over the last decade, begun to animate museum collections in new ways, and reflects on the impact that these new initiatives have had in the broad context of visual culture. Ceramics in the Expanded Field is the culmination of a three-year AHRC funded project, and reflects its major findings. It brings together leading international voices in the field of ceramics, research undertaken throughout the project and papers delivered at the concluding conference. By examining the benefits and constraints of interventions and the dialogue between ceramics and museological practice, this book will bring focus to an area of museology that has not yet been theorized, and will contribute to policy debates and art practice.

The Ceramic Narrative is an exploration of past and present ceramic iconography concerned with the depiction of narratives, or with images meant to be thought-provoking, beyond the merely decorative. The book is beautifully illustrated with an extensive variety of work from history and the present day, showing how many contemporary artists continue this tradition with modern interpretations. Examining ancient Greece, the ceramic imagery of the Maya culture, the ceramics of China, Persia, and Japan, European tin-glaze traditions, and the narrative imagery appearing on later European porcelains, Matthias Ostermann attempts wherever possible not only to present ceramic narratives in their cultural and historical contexts but also to refer to some of the older myths and sources that may have served as inspiration. Applied arts writer David Whiting contributes an essay on the development of ceramic narratives in the twentieth century, while illustrations present the work of more than 75 contemporary international ceramic artists who explore narrative in distinctive and different ways. These include the exploration of mythologies and existing stories; personal visions, private stories and memory; the human figure, relationships and identity; political and social commentary; and finally, the ceramic object itself, seen as message and metaphor. This book will serve as a beginning for further study of this fascinating and little-explored subject and as a celebration of the work of all ceramic artists whose passion is the ceramic narrative.

This ebook presents the work of 30 contemporary artists who have turned to clay to shape their most innovative ideas into stunning works of art. From cups shaped like crystals to a tree trunk made of porcelain and stoneware planters painted to look like ladies, popular curator and blogger Kate Singleton collects here whimsical pieces with narrative, graphic, curious, and organic qualities that blur the line between fine art, design, and craft. Ceramics is a vital guide to an evolving medium and for those interested in the future of art and craft.