Exhibition: Keith Clapson - Touching the Surface

This exhibition brings together a substantial body of ceramic sculptures made by artist Keith Clapson between 2017 and 2023.

In an act of generosity, Clapson invites viewers to touch his highly glazed, folded and voluminous ceramic sculptures. These highly tactile new works are formed by hand in clay and glazed experimentally and abstractly, with intense colour and lustre.

Clapson turned to Maximalism through wanting to produce work “with no restraints on colour, texture and quantity, more is never enough, and the 1990 Madonna track ‘More’ on the ‘I’m Breathless’ album sums up Maximalism for me.”

Consisting of mainly hand-built sculptural forms, Clapson uses ready-made glazes alongside his own glaze mixes applied on earthenware and stoneware and fired at higher temperatures. On pieces that are ‘saggar’ fired, Clapson includes other materials such as glass and metal that melt into the surface. He says: “I tend to stray from the rules and always use a degree of artistic license when creating my pieces. enjoying them as a canvas for glaze experimentation, sometimes working on five pieces at a time.”

Clapson’s sculptural ceramic works appear formed around air, with the folds and creases representing constraint, some pieces bubbling with colours with glaze oozing from their openings. The effect is produced from Clapson’s ‘overflowing emotions’ squeezed out through pressure, representing the start of something new and colourful. These pieces were developed from a personal experience of the limitations Clapson has endured for almost 20 years due to extreme OCD and chart his recovery over a six year period.