ABSTRACT
Ceramics is no stranger to risk taking. Risk comes as standard: in the transformative properties of the firing process the possibility of destruction and the act of creation exist simultaneously. In contemporary ‘post-studio’ ceramics and in the work of artists who use ceramics intermittently, risk-taking continues from the firing process into the museums and galleries. This chapter explores how two seemingly oppositional approaches to the exhibition of ceramics – exhibition in domestic space and destruction as an artistic or performative gesture – have a common willingness to engage with risk. These opposing display strategies are formally distinct, but both engage with physical, curatorial, and aesthetic risk-taking. This chapter suggests that the idea of risk, in different forms, is a point of convergence between two formally distinct strands of contemporary ceramics practice, and that appearances of domesticity can sometimes be deceiving.
