The annual exhibition at Two Temple Place is intended to highlight collections across the UK. It can be exactly what you expect from this almost hallucinatory neo-Gothic mansion – there was an exhibition of the 19th-century critic John Ruskin a couple of years ago. But it also hosts works that challenge or disrupt the interiors that drip with decoration and narrative. Body Vessel Clay is just such an exhibition, bringing modern African ceramics and contemporary pottery, sculpture, performance and film by a number of black women, into the neo-Elizabethan and neo-Renaissance spaces.
The springboard for the show, organised by the Lagos and London-based curator Jareh Das, is a group of works by the Nigerian ceramacist Ladi Kwali and other artists who were based in Nigeria. These works are in regional and national UK museums largely because of a colonial connection: Michael Cardew, the British ceramicist, was made Senior Pottery Officer by the Nigerian colonial government in 1950 and created a Pottery Training Centre in Abuja (now Suleja). Cardew encouraged a hybrid form of pottery that developed the Gwari traditions that he admired with techniques from European studio pottery. He was then involved in promoting and showing them in the UK and beyond.
