Plan your visit to CLAY, offering a seasonal menu of fresh local fare in one of the city's most beautiful spaces. Try our newly-launched spring menu today!
Ai Weiwei is one of the world’s most influential artists and human rights activists, and one of China’s most formidable critics. Ai Weiwei: Unbroken features a selection of the artist's most iconic ceramics, and marks the international debut of new work. See it before it closes on June 9!
SMASH: Nourish is a night of bold artwork, delicious cuisine, refreshing drinks, and invigorating experiences. The Gardiner Museum Young Patron Circle's annual art party sold out last year, so get your tickets early!
The Gardiner Museum is among the few museums in the world focused on ceramics, and is one of the most important specialty museums internationally. It houses approximately 4,000 objects, including European porcelain, ceramics from the Ancient Americas, Chinese porcelain, Japanese porcelain, and contemporary ceramics. Search the collection online!
Everyone can love clay! Become a Friend at one of the world’s great specialty museums and enjoy the benefits, including unlimited admission, invitations to exhibition previews and special events, discounts on lectures and clay classes, and more.
Lobby Display
“Having grown up surrounded by women who expertly sewed, crocheted, knitted, and quilted, I’ve sought my own way to participate in a textile tradition. I cut, mark, and pierce rigid clay as though it were cloth. Traditional quilting patterns like the ‘log cabin’—which allude to all that is light and dark in life, anchored by hearth and home—are purposefully integrated into my work. Through these patterns I can explore the entrenched symbolism as it pertains to my life: my work is the light, my anxieties are the dark, family is my anchor.”
Having grown up in a society and culture that often assigns shame and sloth to those suffering from mental health, Clarke’s recent work is an invitation to an open and honest discussion. After graduating from college, Clarke experienced the mental health issues that plague many young people. While initiatives like Open Minds, Healthy Minds, launched in June 2011, have begun to address mental health, it is only through constant discourse and action that society can continue to change.
About the Artist
Rhoni Clarke (b.1989) is from Orillia, Ontario. Originally planning a career in mathematics, she was drawn to clay after just one ceramic arts course. Rhoni graduated from Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee (BA 2011) and continued her practice at Sheridan College graduating in 2014. Rhoni is currently working for Scott Barnim Pottery in Dundas, Ontario, and living in Burlington.