Introduction | Section 1 | Section 2 | Section 3 | Section 4 | Section 5 | Section 6
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The final room of the exhibition recreates a domestic interior and examines a return to a domestic, vessel-based practice. The object – vessel or otherwise – is no longer self-sufficient. It is either an ironic allusion to traditional forms, such as Cindy Sherman’s Madame de Pompadour porcelain tea service 1990, or kitsch, such as Jeff Koons’ Puppy Vase 1998, or an accumulation of objects, such as Edmund de Waal’s Porcelain Wall 2002 (2004). In Grayson Perry’s work, traditional subject matter and decoration give way to more troubling imagery and concerns.

Edmund de Waal Porcelain Room  2002 Installation at the Geffrye Museum, London © Stephen Speller

Cindy Sherman Madame de Pompadour (Nee Poisson) Tureen  1989-1991 Courtesy Cindy Sherman and Metro Picture Gallery Courtesy Collection Museum for Contemporary Arts-Hertogenbosch/NL	Grayson Perry My Gods  1994 © the artist

Sherman’s comment on luxury is reversed in Lapsed Quaker Ware c 1998, by the American sculptor James Turrell. By creating his own version of the austere eighteenth-century Quaker pottery, Turrell, himself a Quaker, seems to be asking what value there might be in resurrecting old forms and skills.

In this return to a pseudo-private practice, the everyday becomes precious and domestic objects defy their function. Francis Upritchard transforms found and second-hand stoneware jars with hand-made tops that are powerfully totemic. Richard Slee’s cartoon Brooms 1999 are too tall, too brittle to sweep up and Arman’s cups, saucers, plates and teapots in his still life As in the Sink II 1990 are cut in half, incapable of fulfilling their designated function.

The 35,000 clay figures that constitute Field 1990-1 by Antony Gormley (in the Riverside gallery on the second floor), return us once more to the earth. Made from clay taken from the ground in Cholula, Mexico, Field evokes that near-universal myth of creation in which man was created from clay.

Richard Slee Brooms  1999 © the artist Photo credit: Zul Mukida	Antony Gormley Field  1991 Courtesy of the artist and Jay Jopling/ White Cube (London)