Laura Gray - Contemporary British Ceramics and the Influence of SculptureContemporary British Ceramics and the Influence of Sculpture: Monuments, Multiples, Destruction and Display

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Contemporary British Ceramics and the Influence of Sculpture

This is an essential read for the student of contemporary ceramics, providing a fresh perspective on post-studio ceramic practice.

Stephen Dixon, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

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.

Laura Gray has a PhD in Art History from Cardiff Metropolitan University and is a freelance curator, writer and researcher specializing in contemporary art and craft, and twentieth-century sculpture.

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Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies

This series is our home for innovative research in the fields of art and visual studies. It includes monographs and targeted edited collections that provide new insights into visual culture and art practice, theory, and research.

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com/art/series/RRAR

What Drawing and Painting Really Mean
The Phenomenology of Image and Gesture
Paul Crowther

The Concept of the Animal and Modern Theories of Art
Roni Grn

The Aesthetics of Scientific Data Representation
More than Pretty Pictures
Edited by Lotte Philipsen and Rikke Schmidt Kjrgaard

Art : Process : Change
Inside a Socially Situated Practice
Loraine Leeson

Visualizing War
Emotions, Technologies, Communities
Edited by Anders Engberg-Pedersen and Kathrin Maurer

Perception and Agency in Shared Spaces of Contemporary Art
Edited by Cristina Albu and Dawna Schuld

Contemporary British Ceramics and the Influence of Sculpture
Iconoclasm, Monument, and Multiples
Laura Gray

Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies
Making and Being Made
Edited by Corey Dzenko and Theresa Avila

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Contemporary British Ceramics
and the Influence of Sculpture

Monuments, Multiples, Destruction
and Display

Laura Gray

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First published 2018
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2018 Taylor & Francis

The right of Laura Gray to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested.

ISBN: 978-1-138-05429-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-11413-2 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK

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Cover Image

Edmund de Waal, Portbou , 2016. 14 porcelain vessels and 5 Cor-Ten steel blocks in a pair of aluminium and plexiglass vitrines, 53 116 15 cm each; 53 116 35 cm overall. Photograph by Mike Bruce. Courtesy of Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin | Paris.

Chapter Images

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I would like to thank the following institutions, artists, academics and friends for supporting this publication:

The Crafts Council and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art.

The editorial board of Interpreting Ceramics , who have generously given permission for the use of ideas and text that first appeared in Issue 13 of the journal, under the title Re-articulating Domestic Space in Contemporary Ceramics.

Clare Twomey, Edmund de Waal, Julian Stair, Neil Brownsword, Anders Ruhwald, Linda Sormin, Keith Harrison, Natasha Daintry, Jacob van der Beugel, Bouke de Vries, James Beighton, Amy Dickson, Alison Britton, Paul Cummings, Antony Gormley, Thomas Demand, Jeppe Hein, Ronnie Yarisal and Katja Kublitz, David Cushway, Zoe Hillyard, the Arman estate, the Anthony Caro estate, and Ai Weiwei Studio, who have supported my research and the production of this publication by generously giving their time, images of their work, and often both.

Professor Jeffrey Jones, my PhD supervisor, whose intelligence and integrity are matched only by his kind and gentle manner, and who made the doctoral experience as smooth and enjoyable as I think it can be.

Dr BS Ashim, my husband, who has embraced contemporary ceramics with gusto and without whom there would be no adherence to the rules of grammar in my work.

Janice Stainton, whose incisive and constructive criticism has helped shaped this book.

My mother, for introducing me to art, and letting me have every book I ever wanted.

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In which we prepare to find new points of view .

To look at ceramics from a different direction is to see them afresh. Resituating ceramics in relation to sculpture and, occasionally, sculpture in relation to ceramics, prompts new ideas, interpretations and connections that enhance the way we think about artworks, or perhaps how you perceive your own work. By taking time to contemplate and pay close attention, we create a space in which ceramics has the opportunity to appear in unexpected ways. At times, it can be hard to see how things are because of the objects usual background. This background might be its classification, the place where you are seeing it, or what you know about the artist who made it. With this in mind, like a scene changing for the actors on stage, old backgrounds are replaced with new ones, allowing new narratives to be played out.

Every relationship has differences of status and role, ceramics and sculpture are no different. It feels natural to think of sculpture as the defining discipline and the center of perspective; language reinforces this position. Ceramics are described as sculptural, but sculpture is not defined as ceramic-like. This suggests that ceramics is more likely to try to picture itself as it would appear to a sculptures gaze, instead of pursuing its own point of view. Ceramics is more likely to be in danger of living in bad faith with itself by emulating sculpture and, by adopting another disciplines objectifying label sculptural, there is a danger of creating self-doubt. On the other hand, is ceramics alienation from the mainstream art world an opportunity for escape and freedom, with the possibility of reveling in that outsider status? We will look at the fringes, borders and barriers between ceramics and sculpture to try to find the balance in the relationship, a balance in which ceramics is both positively and creatively influenced by sculpture, without losing its own authenticity.