Claudia Clare Ceramics
Statement: I'm a feminist artist who makes painterly pots, both large and small, in full colour and monchrome. I trained as a painter but transferred to pots because I found the turning surface sympathetic to an unfolding visual narrative. Pots are our museum pieces, our archaeological and documentary evidence. Their human, cultural and historic associations connect well to the work I do interpreting women’s histories and contemporary lives. Pots also break and can be rebuilt. It is a compelling metaphor for the human experience of trauma and survival and one I deploy particularly in my feminist work.
Alongside the narrative work I make pots adorned with flowers, trees and, occasionally, landscapes, both urban and rural. These not only give both me and my audiences a break from the weightier stuff, they also allow me to revisit more formal concerns of making, particularly space, structure, design and colour and the way they interact with narrative.
Materials: I use exclusively ceramic materials: a dark brown clay mix, coloured slips, sgraffito line, and clear glaze, sometimes with added enamel colour and lustre. The shattered pots are rebuilt using conservation grade adhesive and Gold, Platinum, or Aluminium leaf is used to gild the edges of shards to frame the internal images or emphasise a broken line.
News in brief
Back to the Drawing Board is my main project for this year and much of next. Details coming soon.
EXHIBITIONS, DISPLAYS, EVENTS
Women Create International, May 30-31st, London I am curating the world's first exhibition of cancelled female and feminist artists. Watch for updates. We have an impressive line up which is still growing.
List of artists here, more being added.
Tickets here including an outline of the event schedule.
Contemporary Ceramics Centre, London and Zuleika Gallery, Woodstock are both now stocking my work
SPEAKING, WRITING, and CURATING
Arts First Podcast, I'm interviewed by Rachel Jordan with the artist Con-she about being a 'dissident' artist and what that means in the contemporary art world in the UK.
I will be speaking at the Women Create Festival, May 30-31, 2025 and am curating the exhibition.
RECENT COVERAGE:
Obieg, Kaya Szulczewska, discusses Censorship by 'progressives' and 'liberals' based on my 2023 show in Warsaw, 'Feminist Satire, No Safe Spaces,' in her article, 'Censorship in Art and the New Taboos, on the example of Claudia Clare's Ceramics.' (sign up to their newsletter to read the whole article.)
Unherd, Jonny Best, 'How activists captured the Arts Council,' includes my encounter with Burgh House, Hampstead.
Studio International: Beth Williamson reviews A Spirit Inside, at The Lightbox, Woking, UK, including a lovely mention of Remembering Atefeh.
Artforum: Claire Bishop tours 3 Warsaw Museums in Summer, 2023, and reviews the state of the art and curating in socio-political terms. Her article, 'Capital Offenses, Cultural Whiplash in Warsaw' includes a 'mixed' response to my exhibition, 'Feminist Satire, No Safe Spaces.' The March 2024 edition includes my response to this article with a reaction from Professor Bishop.
Kolektyw Labrys - Lesbian Feminist Collective, Warsaw, reviewed Feminist Satire, No Safe Spaces in Polish.
The Critic featured an in depth interview with Jo Bartosch: 'Breaking Taboos with Clay,' now also included in Obeig
TV Republika has made an excellent video of me talking about the show and some of the pots. 15 mins - View here.
Katie Treggiden's Broken, (Ludion 2023,) subtitled 'Mending and repair in a throwaway world,' includes a chapter on social justice activism with a beautiful section on 'And the Door Opened,' my project with women@thewell'
'The Stuff of Dreams and Nightmares' Critic Corinna Lotz reviews my recent show, Fired, (2022,) with Frances Aviva Blane, on the Real Democracy Movement site,
FEMINISM
Filia Commission Jug, Sink the Sex Trade, shown at Cardiff conference, October 2022, has posters and cards to buy via the Filia Shop on my 'artist' page.
Feminist Satire, No Safe Spaces,' my exhibition in Warsaw, 2023, has now closed. You can view the pots satirising religious fundamentalism here, the sex trade, here, and Gender theory, here . You can also read Jo Bartosch's lively and well informed introduction here, on the Ujazdowski Castle website.
Remembering Atefeh, (2011-13) has been acquired by the Women's Art Collection, Cambridge.
IN OTHER NEWS:
Read here: the result of the legal action I took against the Craft Potter's Association and University of the Arts, London when they withdrew my invitation to speak at Ceramic Art London 2022. Includes the statement from Levin's, who represented me, and links to press coverage. A concise and accurate article by Ewan Somerville in the Telegraph is reproduced in full on IG here.
AND FINALLY:
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