Figurative Ceramics

The incredible versatility of clay as a modelling material offers the possibility of extremely fragile and intricate work, a virtue recognised through the ancient tradition of making narrative and illustrative figurines.

This potential and its capability of permanence in ceramic still excites the most fastidious and dextrous of contemporary figurative artists, who delight in minute subtleties of form, surface and colour and liken the crafting to that of the jeweller and fine metal-smith.

In modern sculpture the inherent significance of each material used is a considerable factor in our reading of the works. Clay is earth, and the potency of this simple fact speaks of a desire in the artist to retain contact, in this evermore technological world, with the earth from which we also emerged.

Images of ourselves in clay exploit a powerful and regenerative symbolism. Clay has been formed into effigies or figures for as long as it has been formed in to functional vessels; frequently, in many cultures these two needs have combined. Vessels fashioned in the form of figures, or visa-versa reveal an investment of human or super human characteristics into the container; in what it contains.

The almost universal necessity for hollowness in ceramic forms is symbolic in the reading of figurative sculpture. The body as vessel; the body as container of the soul; or at the least, the acknowledgement of the negative form inside the clay implies the appreciation of an invisible presence, of which the clay is its skin.

Peter Bevan

1996