Introduction | Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3 | Section 4 | Section 5 | Section 6

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The transformative and overwhelming nature of clay is explored in Chen Zhen’s Purification Room 1995 (2004), in which an entire room is frozen, embalmed in a layer of clay slip, which simultaneously neutralises and emphasises elements of the everyday.

Andy Goldsworthy’s Clay Wall 2004 recalls Noguchi. With both walls, there is a displacement of the outside to the inside, a messing with the prescriptive cleanliness of the gallery space. Goldsworthy’s installation uses clay from a local quarry, so the clay that was once used to build the bricks of the Gallery is now revealed in its natural state.

The works in the Riverside gallery demonstrate the breadth of contemporary responses to the use of clay as well as its sheer versatility. From the witty use of everyday domestic plates by Richard Wentworth and Jeppe Hein, and the sumptuous chandeliers by Pae White, to the compact monumentalism of Eduardo Chillida, and the playful incorporation of ceramic elements in the work of Roger Hiorns, the possibilities of clay seem endless. The form of the vessel also makes a reappearance, though the idea has been subverted, through scale in Richard Deacon’s Other Sorts 2003, as subject in Bertozzi and Casoni‘s hyperrealist industrial waste container, or literally taken apart as in Tony Cragg’s LAIB 1991 – a pair of pot forms that have been sliced like bread.

Richard Deacon Other Sorts  2003 © The Artist Courtesy Lisson Gallery