Last Saturday saw the kickoff of the Carleton Art Gallery’s first exhibition of the year, “World Ceramics: Transforming Women’s Traditions.”
The idea behind this current exhibition is that much of the “art” pottery in galleries has been done by men. However, outside of the West, the making of pottery for everyday life is dominated by women. These women potters receive less credit for their work than their male counterparts. The aim of “World Ceramics” is to celebrate women ceramic artists by displaying their work from around the world.
The opening of the exhibition was headed by a lecture by Moira Vincentelli, author of “Women and Ceramics, Gendered Vessels,” the book that inspired the exhibition. She took the audience on a tour of women in clay work around the world today. In Lombok, Indonesia, women have developed a highly lucrative ceramics industry for export. In the American Southwest, Pueblo artists use pottery to connect with their cultural history. The lecture also covered the works of Helga Gamboa, an artist of Angolan origin whose works are included in the exhibition and who was in attendance that evening. Her works are hybrids of the traditional and the modern, combining text with traditional Angolan forms.
The exhibition will be open until November 19, so come have a look.
