MAG&M’s ceramics collection sharing stories and connections.

The medium of ceramics, a collection focus of MAG&M, is an artistic tradition which goes back thousands of years. Throughout this period, ceramics have been used for a wide set of purposes including jugs to carry water, platters to hold food, vases to display flowers, figurines with supposed magical qualities, masks for ceremonies, and sculptures for decoration. 

Over the millennia of ceramic production, the process of working with clay, and the resulting objects, have become repositories of knowledge, history, tradition, and culture – handed down from generation to generation.

In the Lady Askin Ceramics Gallery, you are invited to contemplate a curated selection of works from our collection.  For the exhibition, we’ve chosen to arrange the works as defined by three characteristics - sculptural objects on one side of the room, functional objects on the other side of the room, and in the middle, objects which privilege a form of narrative and/or cultural storytelling. 

Of course, it is immediately noticeable that the boundaries between these three definitions are blurry – many of the objects being at once functional, sculptural, and endeavouring to convey the stories of their makers to the viewer. This is the intrinsic beauty of clay art – the forms, techniques, and aesthetics, all stem from a shared lineage. 

Regardless of the artists’ intent, or the function of the artwork, every contemporary piece of ceramics made today contains within it a history of the medium and therefore a history of human endeavour too.