Ceramic Architectures

Renowned Iranian-German visual artist, Shirana Shahbazi is known for her contemporary language that fuses photography, installation and craft techniques. Her work explores perception, color and materiality, establishing dialogues between the traditional and the modern. Shahbazi has exhibited in museums and international biennials, consolidating his place in contemporary art for his sophisticated and poetic approach to the image.

Within his recent practice, his ceramic frames stand out, pieces that transcend their decorative function to become autonomous works. Each frame is created from a delicate artisanal process, where the artist combines glossy glazes, subtle textures and forms that refer to both Islamic geometry and contemporary abstraction. These pieces reflect her interest in questioning the boundaries between the support and the work, the container and the content.

By integrating his ceramic frames into the space, Shahbazi invites the viewer to reconsider the act of framing, endowing it with an almost sculptural meaning. Thus, his frames not only accompany the image, but become the protagonists of a unique aesthetic experience.

Miquel Barceló’s monumental and ephemeral work, Le Grand Verre de terre / Vidre de Meravelles, was presented in February 2016 on the glass windows of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF). This 190 m long by 6 m high fresco was made in situ by scraping dry clay previously spread on the glass panes of the library’s inner courtyard.

This original technique was inspired by the Chauvet grotto in the south of France. Barceló stressed the importance of representing the individuality of each animal drawn in this ancient cave.  It is not so much the technique that takes us to the imaginary of the cave, but rather the matter, and how that matter is transformed into image.

Through the different shades of transparency and cracks, the filtering light reveals the figures of animals and skeletons, and is projected onto the floor, the visitors and the space. 72 felines, 66 mammoths, 65 rhinoceroses, 40 horses, 25 reindeer, goats, 15 bears, 10 aurochs and 2 oxen – all seemed to dance in space.

Florian Gabby is a renowned ceramicist who has documented his work on Instagram for ten years. He shares his processes, ideas, and discoveries. He creates unique tableware, decorative vessels, and sculptures, selling his works primarily through his online store. Recently, he started producing more detailed videos on YouTube. In these videos, he explains his manufacturing philosophy and shows in depth how he makes his pieces.

Florian’s journey in ceramics began at the Rudolf Steiner School, where his passion flourished under the guidance of Caroline Hughes. After gaining experience at Leach Pottery, he continued his education in the skills and design ceramics course at DCCol in Thomastown, Ireland. There, he was awarded “Student of the Course.” Subsequently, he spent three years at Maze Hill Pottery with Lisa Hammond and six months in Japan as an apprentice to Ken Matsuzaki, perfecting traditional techniques. Today, Florian combines his deep technical knowledge with unique creativity, sharing his art and process with a global audience.

Cecil Kemperink’s ceramic sculptures merge her passions for textiles, clay, dance, fashion, and sculpture. These pieces invite interaction, allowing you to see, touch, hear, and experience each work uniquely. Cecil works intuitively, letting her creations evolve in her hands, exploring the apparent contradictions between vulnerability and strength. Inspired by natural rhythms, like waves and day-night cycles, she captures the essence of these movements in her art.

Each sculpture, handmade in her studio surrounded by nature, reflects a meticulous and thoughtful process. The circles are manually connected and fired at different temperatures, sometimes up to fifteen times. These three-dimensional sculptures allow you to change their form and experience various sensations and sounds. Cecil’s works are more than visual art; they are complete experiences inviting interaction and the discovery of new layers of awareness. Each piece reveals unique sensations and perspectives, making every interaction special.

The renowned ceramist Jacques Kaufmann presented his exhibition “Mur/Murs” in the gardens of the Ariana Museum in Geneva, Switzerland. From May 17 to November 10, 2019, visitors could immerse themselves in this fascinating display of ceramic architecture. Kaufmann, known for his powerful architectural works, explored the theme of the wall as a multifaceted symbol of connection and exclusion in our society.

The exhibition was divided into two distinct phases. The first, starting on May 17, featured five monumental and ephemeral installations on the museum grounds, primarily built with bricks. These creations challenged the conventional conception of the wall and its function in the contemporary environment, including works such as “Flight of the fly, 2” and “Filigree,” which offered unique perspectives on the relationship between the wall and its surroundings.

The second phase, which began on July 2, moved to the museum’s basement, where Kaufmann presented his most recent works. Here, the artist continued to explore the diversity of brick as an artistic material. Through this phase, visitors had the opportunity to reflect on the cultural and symbolic importance of walls in our contemporary society while marveling at Jacques Kaufmann’s innovative creations.

Newly commissioned by the Gardiner Museum, Up To and Including Their Limits opens at a time of increasing visibility for trans people. However, as a consequence of this increased exposure, it also coincides with an increase in violence against trans people and the questioning of their rights. In this provocative performance, spectators confront this tension by pushing their bodies to the limit while the audience watches live.

Suspended from a harness in a plexiglass box with walls covered in thick raw clay, Cassils hurls himself from side to side. Scratching the walls and throwing chunks of clay on the floor, he creates “windows” through which the audience can watch the performative action. This is an homage to feminist icon Carolee Schneemann, using clay to re-imagine her eponymous performance (1971-76) from a non-binary trans perspective. As swathes of clay are removed, the artist problematises and complicates the public gaze by engineering voyeurism into the work itself.

According to Sequoia Miller, the curator of the exhibition, “Cassils’ use of clay to shape our understanding of the non-binary body has transformed our perception of both the material and trans identity. Cassils’ work has the power to reframe the way we understand ourselves and our relationships with others, in part through the medium of raw clay”.

Ghanaian-British architect Sir David Adjaye has completed the public spaces for members at the new New York headquarters of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, the largest healthcare union in the United States. Anton Refregier’s mural, which adorned the original SEIU building, is commemorated with a replica in the entrance lobby. It depicts important moments depicting milestones in the SEIU’s struggle for labour rights, inspiring the subsequent rooms in the building.

The original work was mounted on a cinder block wall and its fragility and scale made it impossible to move, so Adjaye commissioned a replica. The reproduction of the mural opened Adjaye to the idea of transferring the rich history of the union to the new headquarters using a similar monumental form.

Thus, Adjaye decided to turn the union’s historic photographs into large-scale, mural-scale, floor-to-ceiling works of art. It was the tile factory Cerámica Suro in Guadalajara, Mexico, which has often worked with renowned artists, that was commissioned to reproduce these 80 photos on tiles at the desired scale, digitalising the images and transferring them to the two-inch square tile glaze.

The arts of cartography and ceramics are not as disparate as they might appear at first glance. Both work with the surface of the ground: the former records landmarks and selects elements to represent them to scale; the latter selects elements from the surface to combine and transform them into vessels or sculptures. For ceramicist Loraine Rutt, taking the physical surface of the earth and making scale models of our planet therefore seemed a natural progression.

Furthering this idea of decontextualising ceramics from their usual scale, Rutt has also made collaborations in the field of architecture. An example of this synergy between craftsmanship and industrial production is his design work for the façade of the Mapleton Crescent building, together with the Metropolitan Workshop studio.

For this commission, Rutt developed a unique blue-green terracotta cladding that responds to the tranquil Wandle River from three different profiles, which crown the building and give a transformative sense of depth to the façade. In addition, the perception of the colour of the earthenware varies according to the time of day. In direct sunlight it is green, and in low light it produces a reflective blue-green appearance that reveals the textures of the terracotta with greater impact.

As part of Valencia World Design Capital 2022 and led by Ana Illueca, the ADN Cerámico project claims the unique way of making design in the Valencian Community thanks to its link with the ceramic tradition.

Through a map showing the work of ceramists spread from north to south of the Valencian Community, it aims to demonstrate that ceramics is a differentiating quality in Valencian design, a declaration of intent stating that ceramics is more alive than ever. In turn, its mission is to highlight contemporary models to inspire new generations of ceramists and designers, as well as to establish collaborations that allow the industry new and innovative looks and ceramists new skills and internationalization of their contribution.

In the words of Ana Illueca “We would like to elaborate an identity that we can be proud of for the region, to build a ceramic community, a strong community that allows us to associate it with a greater economic value for a common benefit. And also for society to understand that there are different types of ceramics, such as technical, traditional, utilitarian, architectural, contemporary… And above all to understand that this is not a fashion or a hobby, but a trade”.

DRDH Architects was one of two British studios, along with FAT, invited to design exhibitions for the 2010 Shenzhen and Hong Kong Biennial of Urbanism. The proposal sought to address the individual and collective desires of the city’s inhabitants, engaging their children in issues such as observation and imagination. Ten workshops were organized in local schools in Shenzhen, in which 500 children participated in the construction of 2000 clay houses. The YoYo workshop, a local ceramics school, made repetitive clay blocks based on brick proportions, in three sizes. Using a set of modeling tools manufactured by DRDH, the children were invited to remake buildings they knew or imagine new ones for their city.

After that, the finished houses were coated with a traditional white glaze that reinforced their collective identity, but through the decoration and firing process each house also became more unique and individual as subtle deformations occurred. Each child was photographed with their finished house and, prior to the opening of the exhibition, they were invited to place it on the model of the city. This was defined by a table measuring 6 by 8 meters, incorporating a series of holes that allowed them to reach anywhere on the surface.

Completed in October 2016, the mural in Jardim Botto Machado is the largest piece of street art in Lisboa. Designed by André Saraiva, It is made up of 52,738 tiles manufactured by Viúva Lamego, following techniques and craft methods production, and hand-painted by the artist. The work was an initiative of the Lisbon City Council, together with MUDE – Museum of Design and Fashion and the S. Vicente Parish Council and span across 188 meters in length and 1011 square meters in area.

The mural, however, is much more than a pretty picture: it captures stories from Saraiva’s life. His drawings suggest a ‘reinterpretation’ of the Portuguese capital, represented through the colors and design that distinguishes his work. It blends past and present, as well as references to other world capitals, where the artist lives and works. On this occasion, Saravia instead of using spray paints or permanent markers, used paintbrushes, a technique that would allow his colourful and exuberant work to remain for at least a hundred years.

This film Private View: André, directed by Julie Georgia Bernard for NOWNESS, shows how the project came to life.

The artist Héctor Zamora’s Lattice Detour is a monument to openness over the enclosure, lightness over heaviness, transience over permanence. The work, the eighth in a series of annual Roof Garden Commissions at The Metropolitan Museum, is organized by Iria Candela, the museum’s curator of Latin American art.

Mr. Zamora’s project is a free-standing curved wall of terra cotta bricks, over 100 feet long and 11 feet high. It appears to have a solid surface and to be perversely positioned to obscure a spectacular view of the park and the Manhattan skyline, nevertheless, the wall surface slowly reveals itself to have unexpected transparency becoming into a sensual and ethereal mesh. The ceramic elements suggest that the work’s role as a partition is equivocal. Its openwork texture allows a full, though filtered—pixelated—view, through it, of the city and park beyond. At the same time, the possibility of interaction between the viewers on either side of the wall is an image fraught with political meaning. With it, the artist wants to reflect what a wall—and specifically the planned U.S.-Mexico border wall—should be and do.

Discover how the artist Héctor Zamora discusses Lattice Detour, his site-specific installation for the Roof Garden at The Met.

The imaginative intervention by the artistic duo Los Bravú on the façade of the Palacio de la Música in Madrid is an invitation to stop and observe in the middle of Gran Vía, one of the busiest and most emblematic streets in Spain.

The work, which is part of an initiative by the Montemadrid Foundation to unite two cultural projects: La Casa Encendida and the Palacio de la Música, is more than 30 metres wide and almost 5 metres high. Inspired by the typical tiles of the capital, the result is 2,842 white laser-printed tiles thanks to the collaboration of Clorofila Digital, Azulejos Peña, and the architect Arturo Garrido.

The ceramic mural, based on a drawing by Dea and Diego (Los Bravú) using different techniques and graphic styles ranging from watercolour to pen, pencil or felt-tip pen, aims to throw ideas, discourses and images at the spectator as if it were a cloud. It depicts scenes where contemporary objects, people and animals are represented in Renaissance style in a continuous space that interweaves a cultural puzzle, sometimes unconnected, in which to reflect the social, artistic and environmental concerns of our day-to-day life in a cosmopolitan city like Madrid.

Felipe Pantone is one of the most recognized and prestigious artists in the world today. He was responsible for developing this peculiar project for the façade of the Fine Arts Faculty of the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV). His work included in his #Chromadynamica series and perfectly done by Onix mosaic with a Pixel Art style, where each pixel is a tessera.

In the own words of Felipe Pantone, “The idea was to adapt my style to the mosaic technique, limiting the amount of colours and treating the tesserae as if they were pixels. The graphics in question represent images that evoke an idea of ​​the present time. It talks about the characteristics that I consider important in our times: the digital world, change and speed.”

With a size of more than 330m2, more than 500.000 pieces of 6 different colours were needed for the construction of the work. These 6 colours at an adequate distance are able to deceive the human eye, making it see a great chromatic variety.

With our heads in the clouds, we often forget about the material beauty and art that surrounds us. Sebastian Erras, however, has won acclaim and a wide following for documenting the beauty of the world beneath our feet. Sebastian is a German freelance photographer specialising in interior photography. He has a passion and a keen eye for symmetry, design and decoration. With “Parisian Floors” he started taking pictures of the floor of the city of Paris, inspired by the mosaics during a trip to Marrakech and his visit to the Bahai Palace. In his Instagram account (@parisianfloors), he shows a brilliant collection of floors from different parts of the world.

This personal project of the German photographer tries to capture the surprising patterns of ceramic tiles, discovered while travelling through the cities. Starting with Paris, Sebastian has gone on to photograph different European cities such as Barcelona, London and Venice. In all of them, his shoes appear to give a sense of scale and remind us that sometimes it is also permissible to look down. The series draws attention not only to design but also to fashion, as Erras’ elegant shoes have increasingly become part of the compositions of his photographs.

All images credited to Sebastian Erras Photography

Second Hand is an artistic project by Zhanna Kadyrova, which began in 2014 and reflects on and engages with Soviet monumental art. From then on, Ukrainian artist has been exploring ‘the history of buildings that have changed ownership and function’ by making visual analogies between the object and the place. That is, her work explores the relationship between architecture and mosaic panels of socialist housing projects, institutions and factories. One of the most striking aspects of Kadyrova’s art, which includes photography, video, sculpture, performance, and installation, is her experimentation with forms, materials, and meaning.

In this work, the artist creates various objects reminiscent of Soviet fashion of the 1960s-1970s. She uses both smalt and ceramic tiles, Second hand material predominantly taken from destroyed or abandoned Soviet factories. Second Hand project is delimited of two factories: the silk factory Darnitsa, and the Kiev Film Copy Factory.

The exhibition functions as a space of encounter for these materials which now takes new historical and symbolic significance. Film reel, ceramic and synthetic fibres, smalt and concrete build here a frame for Kadyrova’s objects. In short, a result where the artist encourages viewers to see old buildings and castoffs in a striking new light.

All images credited to Zhanna Kadyrova

In a village near Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais state in Brazil is based the Inhotim Centre for Contemporary Arts. A fascinating project in which various pavilions and structures are located throughout the lush green parkland of 35 hectares, surrounded by a verdant native forest. The most recent of these installations is one dedicated to Adriana Varejão (Río de Janeiro, 1964), one of the leading contemporary artists in Brazil.

The artist’s practice centers on the use of ceramic tiles, both depicted in paint and as literal components of the work. Varejão has cited a range of inspirations, alluding to her native Brazil’s colonization by featuring the blue and white ‘azulejos’ brought by the Portuguese colonists. With meticulous attention to craft, Varejão’s practice stages the convergence of binaries, between geometric and organic, mesmerizing and repulsive.

In Caruaru, Adriana Varejão has sculpted what may resemble a cross-section of a tiled floor, and beneath it, we see a bloody mess of entrails. The geometry and cool colouring of the tiles is offset by the violent, expressive and irrational nature of the ‘meat’ below. Varejão reiterates this fact with an emphasis on memory and history: we shall never be able to dissociate or apologise for the atrocities of colonisation, war, and injustice.

In a dual presentation of Chinese art and culture past and present, the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series at the National Gallery of Victoria presents China’s ancient terracotta warriors alongside an exhibition of new works by one of the world’s most exciting contemporary artists, Murmuration by Cai Guo-Qiang.

“The ever-changing formation of 10,000 porcelain birds in Murmuration seems to embody the lingering spirits of the underground army,’ says Cai Guo-Qiang, ‘or perhaps the haunting shadow of China’s imperial past. But in this age of globalisation, aren’t they also forming a mirage, an exoticised imagination of the cultural other?”

Cai Guo-Qiang’s handmade Murmuration undulate here and there, softly imitating the mighty face of Mount Li. Juxtaposed together, the ancient soldiers and contemporary flock merge to form a new meridian. The porcelain birds are Cai’s answer to the terracotta warriors. They even arose from a pit where they were blackened by gunpowder in a series of controlled explosions. They may fly in formation, but a bird will always be a conspicuous symbol of freedom. By contrast Qin Shihuang’s guardian army is a remnant of a political system that prefigures every totalitarian state in history.

Gateway, by Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos, an artwork integrated in a whimsical pool garden and is the result of collaboration whit Jupiter Artland. The nine-metre swimming pool is surrounded by a hedge that frames the whole composition and is a natural limit to the artist´s intervention. Furthermor, It is essential not to easily give the visitor the obvious path to entrance of this constellation.

Of Gateway, artist Joana Vasconcelos states: «Gateway is a big splash that invites the public to immerse in a joyful and spirited dimension, leading to a connection with the energy of the Earth. It’s like a threshold to another universe that we’re not conscious of but through which we can flow».

The artist has incorporated patterns from her own astrological chart into the design of the artwork, which is made of 11,366 hand-painted and glazed tiles crafted using traditional methods at a 100-year-old factory in Vasconcelos’ native Portugal. Each tile is one of a kind and was developed by Viúva Lamego and Atelier Joana Vasconcelos for its specific location on this site. Like so much of Vasconcelos’ work, Gateway is collectively formed and the result is a labour highlighting the industry’s close cooperation with craftsmen and artists.

All images credited to Joana Vasconcelos, Dário Branco and Allan Pollok-Morris

Edmund de Waal is an artist who writes. Based in London, he trained as a potter, studying ceramics at Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation Scholarship in Japan. Both his artistic and written practice have broken new ground through their critical engagement with the history and ceramics, as well as with architecture.

The artist, whose porcelain is exhibited in museums and galleries around, has developed an international reputation in the art world as a master of pottery. He bringing refinement and passion to its creation and expanding the limits of preconceived ideas of his discipline, by questioning an object’s narrative, their place and how they are displayed. His work with this material is a journey of a lifetime that offers a comment on time, memory and objects. Therefore, he reminding the viewer that context is integral to the meaning of art. De Waal continually investigates themes of diaspora, memorial, materiality and over all the colour white with his interventions and artworks. The ceramist states: “Other things in the world are white but for me porcelain comes first”

In this video shows a unique view inside the studio of Edmund de Waal where he talks to Will Rycroft about his lifelong obsession with porcelain clay and why shards have become an integral part of his work.

With help from the Arts Council England, the Joanna Bird Foundation’s first touring exhibition Marking the line; Ceramics and Architecture was launched. This project was conceived as a life-specific exhibition in response to Sir John Soane, one of Britain’s greatest architects. Firstly opened at Sir John Soane’s Museum, the show travelled on to two further houses designed by Soane: Port Eliot in Cornwall and Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing.

The Foundation commissioned the artists Nicholas Rena, Carina Ciscato, Clare Twomey and Christie Brown to create ceramic installations responding to the work of the architect. Above all, the exhibition sought to challenge where and how we view ancient and modern works of art. Consequently, by introducing contemporary ceramic art into an historic architectural setting visitors were able to explore the relationship between ceramics and architecture. Therefore, it was proved that different dialogues between the work and it’s historic setting emerged as the exhibition translated from one venue to the next.

In short, Marking the line has introduced many more people to Soane’s work and legacy, including his gem of a Museum in Holborn and his home at Pitzhanger Manor. ‘This is a fascinating exhibition with contemporary artists taking inspiration from one of our most visionary architects. ’ – Boris Johnson, Mayor of London.

The Portuguese artist Dalila Gonçalves has developed “Kneaded Memory”, a garden of sculptures that currently occupy the Blankenbergue square in Flanders. The installation is composed of a series of pieces that resemble rocks and fragments with different shapes and sizes.

In order to develop the installation, the surface of the stones was mapped and the ceramic pieces were moulded so that they fit perfectly to these irregular and rounded surfaces. In this way, a grid was created to indicate where each decorative component would be placed permanently.

It is through this conjugation that Goçalves sought to cross the local Belgian narrative and the traditional Portuguese craft relationship with the ceramic tile manufacturing process. In fact, part of the surfaces of these shapes are covered with manufactured tiles that typically adorn the vibrant facades of his native country. In addition, since Flanders is historically renowned for the quality of its ceramics and tiles, the patterns of the tiles came from Blankenbergue.

Based on experimental play, the permeability of materials and the processes of artistic practice, Dalila Gonçalves delves into the relationship between kneaded memory and oblivion.

Originally trained in painting, sculptor ceramist Enric Mestre Estellés that born 1936, studied at San Carlos Fine Arts School in Valencia and the ceramics school in Manises. During his time as a ceramics student, he met Alfonso Blasco and connected whit the artistic interests of this ceramist. The artist, in the thirties, alongside other such as Llorens Artigas and Francisco Ibáñez, took Spain into the mainstream of modern ceramic art.

Mestre, both as a teacher and practitioner, has himself come to be regarded as an important liberating link between this formative generation and that of Spain’s younger avant-garde and he has been recognized worldwide for his sculptural objects. Influenced by the ceramics of the Far East, his propositions were based on using high temperature bodies and investigating new vitrifications and glazed that made. This made unnecessary to employ painted ornament in the traditional manner.

Enric Mestre’s art is evocative as boxlike, slab built architectural structures of austere colors dominated by right angles. Objects of an interlocking geometry, of light and shadow, that create tableaux to the imagination whit a poetic charm which saves them from only being rational and cold. Though these objects are often carefully planned and developed. Mestre insists on intuition as if obeying a kind of constructive poetics restraining and controlling personal expressions without eliminating them.

New Zealand artist Kate Newby, creates handmade, crudely constructed sculptural interventions appropriating the materials and vernaculars of architecture. Kate Newby’s works are poetic confrontations with spatial conditions and the fleeting nature of interactions. Through small as well as radical interventions into existing environments, she directs our view to what is often overlooked in everyday life. The objects she creates are testimonials to individual experiences, with the specific context of creation remaining inseparably linked to the resulting work.

For the exhibition “I can’t nail the days down” at Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz, Kate Newby continues her ongoing engagement with ephemeral and often peripheral situations. Therefore she created a large-scale work installed on the floor in the Karlsplatz building, using bricks as artistic material. The sculpture unfolds as a material texture that invites visitors to step onto the work, to move across the surface and encounter its details. The artist modified unfired bricks and inserted found elements: shattered glass, old coins and bits of clay collected, that through the firing process unexpected formations are produced.

Athos Bulcão (1918-2008). He was a Brazilian Plastic Artist who began to devote himself to the plastic arts after he left his medical degree. He studied drawing and lithography at the Académie de La Grande Chaumière in Paris, up becoming, thanks to his impeccable order to paint, his intelligent and precise way of intervening with the tradition of tiles in buildings or urban space, in the perfect relationship between art and architecture.

Influenced by Paul Klee, Fernand Léger, Miró, Portinari or Van Gogh, the Brazilian artist collaborated with several architects, including Oscar Niemeyer and João Filgueiras, designing tile panels for the buildings of the new city of Brasilia.

Since 1992, the Athos Bulcão Foundation has been dedicated to preserving and disseminating the work of the plastic artist, developing various projects to promote, through art, culture and communication, the social development of the entire community.

The photographer Joan Fontcuberta and the ceramist Antoni Cumella have come together to make this photomosaic mural located in Plaza de Isidre Nonell in Barcelona on the occasion of the Tercentenary of the fall of Barcelona in 1714.

This work has been made with the contribution of thousands of citizens. Pictures were collected after a call to the citizens to participate in this collaborative art project. They have sent personal images whose required theme was ‘moments of freedom’. With them, 4000 ceramic tiles were formed, distributed in 50 rows of 80 tiles each, which together form the image of kissing lips. Joan Fontcuberta said that it had been inspired by a phrase by Oliver Wendell Holmes “The noise of a kiss is not as deafening as a cannon, but its echo is more lasting.”

Jørgen Hansen started as a ceramic artist in 1965. For many years he was doing handmade, mostly thrown pottery and at a certain point he felt the need for a more extensive expression and in 1994 he made his first Firingsculpture for a museum in Denmark.

The Firingsculptures are built in 1-3 weeks in a continuous process. They are made out of concentric terracotta lattice walls, one behind the other and with openings of different kinds. Inside there’s space left for combustible that will set the core on fire.

The climax takes place when the sculpture, wrapped in insulation, becomes its own kiln and fires to 1000-1200 centigrades. At this stage the insulation is taken away and for short intense moments the sculpture glows from the inside with the most luminous light and unusual visual phenomenons happen.

“My Firingsculpture can resonate the site where it is built. When the sculpture is glowing you feel both the instant and the entire period of the project from the first step on the bare ground until its complete erosion. It is about time and everything’s perpetual change”.

In this claymation for Stevanna Jackson (from the musically talented Jackson family), the French artist Romane Granger uses carefully modeled clay to suggest the complex ecosystem of life on the ocean’s floor. In Oceans Blues, the coils and folds of clay shift in tune with Jackson’s music as waves, flower-like designs and human characters emerge from the sea.

‘It sil heve’ are the legendary words that were uttered in 1985 when the ‘race of all races’ was able to be held once again after a gap of 22 years. The idea for the project is a picture, which from a distance appears to be a row of skaters helping each other and keeping each other out of the wind, a characteristic scene from the Elfstedentocht (a race on skates passing through 11 Frisian towns). Seen close up, the tiles depict thousands of portraits of all the skaters that have ever finished the race.

The artistic duo of Maree Blok and Bas Lugthart approached Koninklijke Tichelaar Makkum to handle the production process, which involved baking the photos onto the tiles using a screen-printing process.

The project was carried out on the Canterlandse bridge, the last bridge the skaters have to pass under in the Elfsteden route before reaching the finish a few kilometres further in Leeuwarden.

The Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei, challenges our first impressions with his installation Sunflower Seeds: what you see is not what you see, and what you see is not what it means. The sculptural installation is made up of what appear to be millions of sunflower seed husks, apparently identical but actually unique. Although they look realistic, each seed is made out of porcelain. And far from being industrially produced, ‘readymade’ or found objects, they have been intricately hand-crafted by hundreds of skilled artisans.

Poured into the interior of the Turbine Hall’s vast industrial space at Tate Modern, the seeds form a seemingly infinite landscape. The precious nature of the material, the effort of production and the narrative and personal content create a powerful commentary on the human condition.

FIELD is a project by British sculptor Antony Gormley uses the human form to explore man’s existence in and relation to the world through the earth. ”From the beginning I was trying to make something as direct as possible with clay: the earth. I wanted to work with people and to make a work about our collective future and our responsibility for it. I wanted the art to look back at us, its makers (and later viewers), as if we were responsible. Responsible for the world that it (FIELD) and we were in. I have made it with help 5 times in different parts of the world.

The most recent is from Guangzhou, China, and was exhibited in Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing in 2003. It is made from 125 tonnes of clay energised by fire, sensitised by touch and made conscious by being given eyes.

The 210,000 body-surrogates completely occupy the space in which they are installed, taking the form of the building and excluding us, but allowing visual access. It is always seen from a single threshold. The dimensions of the viewing area are equivalent to no less than one sixth of the total floor area of the piece. This viewing area is completely empty. The viewer then mediates between the occupied and unoccupied areas of a given building. I like the idea of the physical area occupied being put at the service of the imaginative space of the witness.” Interview with the sculptor Antony Gormley about FIELD.

“The Substància Cremada project by Milena Villalba focuses on the abandoned ceramic factories located in Onda (Castellón). It’s a research line related to the abandoned industrial heritage and the obsolescence of these buildings.

Their print on the population is strong, there was a time when the whole town lived into the rhythm of the factories’ shifts and the baking times of the ovens. These pictures build a document where all the details are legible, and unfortunately this is the only thing we are going to have from them in a few years if nothing is done because the degradation rate is increasing year after year.”

Substància Cremada, Milena Villalba

The restoration of Eduardo Paolozzi’s iconic mosaics at Tottenham Court Road station has been completed.

Paolozzi was a leading figure in the Pop Art movement, and this mosaics, from 1986, are widely considered to be one of the most spectacular examples of post-war public art. The designs, that cover 950 square metres, contain references to London’s culture and economy.

Around 95 percent of the mosaics have been retained at the station while it underwent a huge expansion. Wherever possible the original tiles have been reused, and where new tiles have been required they have been closely colour-matched using the same process as the originals. The sections that could not be relocated were transported to the renowned Edinburgh College of Art.

This art installation Blood Swept Lands an Seas of Red at the Tower of London marked one hundred years since the first day of Britain’s involvement in the First World War. Created by artists Paul Cummins and Tom Piper, 888,246 ceramic poppies progressively filled the Tower’s moat between July and November of 2014. Each poppy represented a British military fatality during the war.

The poppies encircled the iconic landmark, creating not only a spectacular display but also a location for personal reflection. The scale of the installation was intended to reflect the magnitude of such an important centenary and create a powerful visual commemoration.

The ceramic pieces were manufactured with techniques used by potters during the First World War (Making the poppies). After the installations all the poppies were sold, raising millions of pounds which were shared equally amongst six service charities.