1st Edition
Contemporary British Ceramics and the Influence of Sculpture Monuments, Multiples, Destruction and Display
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.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter One
Becoming Partners?
Creative Tension: Defining ceramics
Sculpture: A category in danger of collapse
The Art and Craft Divide
An Overview of the Book
Chapter Two
Monumental Matters
Monuments and the Collective Memory
Two Approaches: The logical and the abstracted monument
Ceramics in Civic Space
Wheel of Fortune: Monumentalizing Stoke-on-Trent
Making it Big: The monumental style
Chapter Three
The Numbers Game: Multi-part compositions
Do Numbers Matter?
Plane Thinking: Horizonal groups
High Rise: Stack, build, repeat
The Expressive Possibility of Repetition
Clare Twomey: Master assembler
Chapter Four
The Art of Destruction: Ceramics, Sculpture and Iconoclasm
What is Iconoclasm?
Iconoclasm and Art
Vases and Vandalism
Out of the Ordinary: Destroying domestic ware
Clay in Common
Past Imperfect: The art of transformative repair
Destruction as Cultural Critique
Please Do Not Touch: Destruction in the vitrine
Biting the hand that feeds? Iconoclasm as institutional critique
Chapter Five
Encounters: Ceramics on Show
Thinking About Exhibitions
Clay as an Authentic Material for Sculpture: The Raw and the Cooked
Ceramics and Minimalism: The New White
Ceramics Under Threat: A Secret History of Clay
Post-Studio Practice: Possibilities and Losses
Ceramics for the Home
The Separation of Art and the Home
Home Coming: Contemporary ceramics in domestic space
Domesticating the White Cube
Conclusion
Radical Plasticity
A Single Material
Workmanship
The Vessel
The Current of Influence
The Future
Biography
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.
