The Gardiner is now open from Thursday - Sunday, including free weekend admission! There's plenty of space to reconnect and amazing art to discover in all corners of the Museum. Clay Restaurant is still open Tuesday - Sunday. Reservations fill up fast, so book your table early. Please read our new health and safety policies before you visit.
From sticky to crusty, pliable to powdery, and shaped to shapeless, clay’s ability to transform in real time is prompting a new generation of artists to explore the possibilities of this ancient material. RAW features new work by four artists who are pushing boundaries with unfired clay: Cassils, Magdolene Dykstra, Azza El Siddique, and Linda Swanson. See it now!
We're firing up the kilns again! Join us on Saturdays and Sundays from 1 - 3 pm for drop in clay classes in our pottery studios. We've reduced our class sizes to allow for safe physical distancing, and instituted new health and safety protocols. Registration opens online at 10 am on the morning of the class. We can't wait to see you back in the studios!
Every object in our permanent collection can be accessed through our eMuseum portal. Learn about individual collecting areas, like Italian Maiolica or Modern and Contemporary Ceramics, or search the full collection by keyword. You'll be amazed by what you discover!
As we begin to welcome visitors back to the Gardiner, we need your support to continue offering innovative and engaging exhibitions, programs, and community projects on site and online. Make a donation and help us build community with clay.
Amber Zuber (b. 1973) has a BA in History from McMaster University. She studied Ceramics at Sheridan College, School of Craft & Design (2010-2013), and completed a Summer Assistant Residency at Peters Valley Craft Centre in 2012. In her final year at Sheridan, she was honoured with two graduate exhibition awards for Best in Show: The Gardiner Museum Award (Ceramics) and The Ottenmiller Graduate Exhibition Award (Craft & Design). Since June 2013, she has been an artist-in-residence at Harbourfront Centre.
Artist Statement
My work engages with concepts of identity. Through the making of objects that elicit memory, whether experienced or imagined, my work is an investigation of the self and of our attachments. Interpreting my surroundings in order to re-examine and re-invent, My Canadian Landscape is a wood-fired series that looked to my city block as a muse— the visual identity of Toronto that lies in front, above and below me. The city manhole covers were my texture and the buildings my form. Using wood to fuel the kiln, the clay was deliberately left bare in order to allow the natural effects of the flame and ash to adorn the surfaces. I appreciate the mundane textures and forms of the everyday and these vessels serve as trace souvenirs of my immediate surroundings.