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.
Part of the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival
This multi-media series offers a reflection on humanity’s ingenious use of nature and our interaction with the basic building blocks of material design: sand, water, and clay. From the earliest use of clay in communicating and creating functional vessels to using it to tell stories through sculpture, humans have imagined and manufactured inspiring objects to help us ease the course of our daily lives and engage us in further leaps of imagination.
Ingenuity features eight digital images of nature set in shadow boxes. Ceramic shards are applied over each landscape to prompt the viewer to reflect upon history and the complexity of our relationship with nature. While paying tribute to humanity’s cleverness and the instinct to create, learn, and progress, each piece serves as a distinct reminder that the ‘materials of ingenuity’ and the ecosystems they support are being challenged, and of the need to preserve them.
About the artist
Pam Purves is a Canadian photographer born in Guelph, Ontario. She received a Fine Art degree from the University of Guelph in 1972. Her early work in landscape photography led to large-scale soft focus works of both landscape and cityscape inspired by such artists as Uta Barth, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Mark Rothko. Her current work derives from an interest in the roots of abstract painting in nature. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States, the Caribbean, and Italy. She lives and works in the GTA, Nova Scotia, and Nevis, West Indies.
Header image courtesy Pamela Purves