Body Vessel Clay

Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art
29th January–24th April 2022

In our 10th annual exhibition, Two Temple Place will showcase the ceramic medium through artworks by three generations of Black women artists working in clay.  The Art Newspaper is already calling it, “…one of the most eagerly anticipated exhibitions of next year…”  You can book here now.

Body Vessel Clay spans 70 years of ceramics, celebrating the medium in new and surprising ways. Beginning with the seminal Nigerian potter, Ladi Kwali, and examining her interaction with 1950s British Studio Pottery, this important new exhibition brings together a rich history with experimental new works by Black women working with clay today.

Through Kwali and her female contemporaries, this new perspective on one of the world’s oldest artforms will reinterpret the line of Kwali’s influence and its resonance on a younger generation of international contemporary women artists working with clay in radical new ways.  Artists celebrated in the exhibition include Magdalene Odundo DBE, who worked with Kwali, through Bisila Noha, looking both backwards and forwards, and into a striking contemporary display from Phoebe Collings-James, Shawanda Corbett, Vivian Chinasa Ezhuga, Jade Montserrat and Julia Phillips.

Body Vessel Clay will be accompanied by a busy programme of talks, events, late night openings and craft workshops – sign up to the mailing list now to be the first to know!

The exhibition is curated by independent curator, researcher and writer Dr Jareh Das.