We've reopened exclusively to Gardiner Friends & Get Acquainted cardholders, and we'll reopen to the public with two days of free admission on July 11 and 12. Regular admission rates resume on July 13. We can't wait to welcome you back! 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. It reopens to the public on July 11!
We're posting family-friendly art activities inspired by our collection and the endless possibilities of clay. Visit our Family Day page for weekly crafts, colouring pages, and more fun art projects that you can enjoy at home.
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.
Renowned artist An Te Liu explores the space around things. Drawn at first to the burnished surfaces and anthropomorphic features of funerary ware found in the Gardiner’s Ancient Americas collection, Liu has transformed discarded Styrofoam packing from consumer goods into ceramic sculptures that evoke a multiplicity of references. Using remnants of the contemporary world, Liu conjures forms recalling iconic works of both the ancient and modern periods. While each sculpture bears the imprint of an object in use today, the ambiguity of their origin invites reflection upon our relationship to things, both utilitarian and artistic, old and new. As such, the nineteen works of MONO NO MA stand like fossils of an evolving, unconscious present.
In Japanese, mono is a word for ‘thing’, while ma means ‘space’ or ‘gap’. Brought together by the possessive term ‘no’, they describe a form that is at once plenitude and void. Literally translated as ‘space of the thing’, MONO NO MA oscillates between memory and loss, the familiar and the enigmatic, thing and no-thing.
Exhibition Programs & Events
Friday September 6, 6 – 10 pm Opening Party Tickets: $50
Presenting Sponsors: Gerald Sheff And Shanitha Kachan