By Sarah Rose Sharp, June 2022, The ceramics-focused Earth Oracles is a garden of earthly delights, with sumptuous glazes and a mastery of the medium on proud display. TORONTO — When ceramic artists place their hands in clay, they are echoing an expressive gesture that has been with humanity for some 20,000 years. With all that in mind, you might think there is no new ground for contemporary ceramicists — but, as Earth Oracles proves, nothing could be further from the truth. The group show at Mayten’s features 15 artists, each of whom has taken their ceramic practice in a unique and groundbreaking direction.

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Laurent Craste, “Adolf Loos’ wet dream IV” 2013, porcelain, glaze, poker, 11.5 x 16.5 x 22 in

March 19 – June 25th, 2022

Mayten’s

The ceramics-focused Earth Oracles is a garden of earthly delights, with sumptuous glazes and a mastery of the medium on proud display.

TORONTO — When ceramic artists place their hands in clay, they are echoing an expressive gesture that has been with humanity for some 20,000 years. With all that in mind, you might think there is no new ground for contemporary ceramicists — but, as Earth Oracles proves, nothing could be further from the truth. The group show at Mayten’s features 15 artists, each of whom has taken their ceramic practice in a unique and groundbreaking direction.

“Coming from Iran, we had clay and ceramics for thousands of years, not only for functional purposes, but artistic purposes,” said Mayten’s co-founder Farnoosh Talaee, who co-curated the exhibition with participating artist Lindsay Montgomery. “We wanted to show how far you can go with the materials, and these are all out-of-the-box artists.”

In keeping with the gallery’s overall values of education and inclusivity, the group is highly diverse, in terms of age, gender, race, sexuality, and career trajectory. The show is quietly majority female, and features stars on the rise like Roxanne Jackson, mid-career powerhouses like Penn State University associate professor Shannon Goff, and early-career artists like Sami Tsang, just finishing her MFA at Alfred University in New York State. With such a varied group of radical ceramicists, the exhibition runs the risk of barely controlled chaos, but Earth Oracles is instead a garden of earthly delights, with sumptuous glazes, fierce and fantastical forms, and a mastery of the medium on proud display.

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- By Sarah Rose Sharp, June 2022

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