by Natalie Baerselman le Gros
February 2025
In the summer of 2023, my colleague and I, in preparation for this exhibition and thanks to the generosity of the Danish Arts Foundation, travelled to Denmark on a research trip to meet many of the artists exhibited here. We were invited into artist’s studios and offered insight into their creative artistic process.
Each artist, welcoming us with warm Danish hospitality, was keen to show us where and how they created their works. It struck me how the different elements of the artist’s processes, the marrying of both creative, experimental tasks and practical, technical activities, achieved perfect harmony in each studio. None of the artist’s value one set of skills or stage of the process over another. The works themselves demonstrate a high-level of hard-learned and long-practiced skill and their familiarity and command of the volatile clay material, to achieve works that are visually beautiful, artistically enticing and technically sophisticated.
One of the joys of clay and a factor for many artists in their preoccupation with the material is its pliability and malleability, its capacity to take any form with the press of a finger. The exhibits within this exhibition are testament to this, vessels give way to figurative pieces, to abstract geometric structures and biomorphic organic forms. Clay’s elemental qualities, dug raw from the ground, dried in the sun or rendered permanent by fire, make it a material accessible to all throughout the globe, both intellectually and artistically, even with limited skill and rudimentary tools.
This accessibility means the medium can be and is enjoyed en masse by hobbyists and amateurs and although this should bear little impact on those trained and accomplished artists and crafts people working in clay, there has been what could be described as a proliferation of amateurism in clay. Perhaps in some way also due to the material’s connections with non-artistic outputs in craft, manufacture and architecture. It has meant, on occasion, the long-learned skill and craftsperson-ship has been overlooked and undervalued where clay enters the artworld outside of the skilled ceramicist’s hands.
Recent exhibitions that proffered ‘boundary-breaking’ uses of clay and an apparent ‘widening’ of the definition of ceramic art by ‘multi-media artists’, showed mostly an incidental use of it, with little finesse or command of the medium. Generally, those artists that did demonstrate deft skill with clay and the artistry of ceramic were relegated to the back rooms – actual titans of contemporary ceramic making presented almost as the old guard.
It is not surprising that a group of artists from Denmark would display incredible skill and command of their material in conjunction with experimental and diverse artistic creativity with clay, given the country’s investment in creative learning, the continued institutional support of artists and the value placed on the well-made in general society. A unique educational system contributes to Denmark’s creative communities in højskole (folk schools) that are not focused on learning across a breadth of core subjects (particularly significant for the UK, where creative education struggles under the pressures of STEM focused curriculums and governments). With no fixed curriculum, no exams and no grades, students are encouraged to pursuit their desires and given the opportunity to study their choices in great depth, the arts and ceramic in particular being a keen focus of many schools. The success of this could be seen in the country’s globally recognised design output, characterised by a straight-forward minimalism behind which there is no space to hide poorly made or badly finished craftsperson-ship. Clay as a material, and ceramic as a medium, enforces a similar honesty, it is easy to make poor ceramics, but the well-made shines. With this is in mind, it is impossible to not appreciate the exhibited works for their technical achievement and the success with which they represent and deliver their artistic messages.
Any artist working in clay, will know, an object’s weakest point is where one piece of clay joins another. For artists such as Lotte Westphael, who mosaics small tiles of graduated colour together to form vessel walls; Heide Hentze, who raises three-dimensional architectural geometries from the thinnest leaves of porcelain; Steen Ipsen, who’s clusters of repeated forms are strung together, creating a visual and literal tension; and Martin Bodilsen Kaldahl, who constructs vast writhing structures from extruded, cut and assembled clay tubes, the successful construction of their clay object relies on a deep material understanding and a great deal of patience. Forming is one issue, working against the forces of gravity to construct the desired shapes, whilst allowing the clay, and its slip cement, sufficient drying time, slow enough to ensure no cracks emerge but thoroughly enough to ensure there is no moisture left before firing. The work of these artists is slow and methodical, a slip-up during their process could call time on a work of art.
For some works, the accomplished application of glaze brings the work more than just a decorative surface and unites it as one single form. Morten Løbner Espersen’s vessels and sculptures are so dense with glaze it would be possible to assume there isn’t a clay form upon which it is applied. It lends the work a sense of movement, although set, the glaze can still be seen to drip and run, the works appear almost alive. Similarly, in the work of Pernille Pontoppidan Pedersen and Annelie Stokke Grimwade, this animalism approaches the literal. Their surfaces may not be obviously naturally inspired, but their glazes work with the form, either biologically inspired or representations of actual animals, and its texture towards the exotic, and, as in nature, suggest there is something to be wary about. The works tackle difficult subjects such as transhumanism and abortion (Pontoppidan Pedersen) and colonial systems and anti-slavery narratives (Stokke Grimwade) and the aura and feeling of the work reflect this, not just in their artistic expression but in the technical manipulation of form, surface and colour.
Clay and ceramics have close links to the body, in the taxonomy of vessels, built of foot, body, belly, neck and lip, as well as in creation mythology and perhaps playing their part in the evolution of life on Earth. The contemplation of ceramics in space provokes a viewer’s awareness of their own body through scale, orientation and connectedness, and through personal proximity. Marie Herwald Hermann and Turi Heisselberg Pedersen create assemblages of forms, their interaction allows us to contemplate the individual object and the group, as well as the tableau in space. Herwald Hermann’s forms can be vessel based, others abstract and organic, and she gathers them together on platforms, plinths and shelves, their domestic scale makes them familiar to our own self. Heisselberg Pedersen’s technique of spraying the matte glaze gives the work an organic appeal, like preserved coral. Contrastingly, Anders Herwald Ruhwald often creates work on a larger scale, those exhibited are almost person-sized and so invite instant comparison to our own form. Each body engages with the space it takes up and the gravity of the dripping glaze gives weight. Herwald Ruhwald’s use of clay is an extension of the body, recording its movements and thus relaying haptically the artist’s intention.
The application of impeccable technique allows the artistic messaging to shine through, and Malene Hartmann Rasmussen and Jørgen Haugen Sørensen demonstrate this through clear storytelling in their work. The vibrant colours and hard shining glaze are characteristic of Hartmann Rasmussen’s illustrative sculptures that depict mythical creatures, fantasy fauna and ancient folk customs, the aesthetic lending them a permeability but also an exaggeration akin to caricature. Haugen Sørensen’s narratives tell a darker tale of chaos, violence and death, one echoed by his coarse use of clay. Formed by pinching and clawing hands and often left unglazed, Haugen Sørensen makes a metaphor of the rawness portrayed in uncooked clay, captured by fire.
The ambition of this exhibition was to demonstrate the breadth and creativity of a nation’s artistic output in clay, for which Denmark has a rich and abundant landscape. It became clear though that the backbone of exquisite artistry and diverse ‘boundary-breaking’ expression is impeccable skill, material knowledge and technical respect. All the artists here, and many more back in Denmark, are outstanding examples and advocates of this.
