What Holds - Ceramic Boxes and the Language of Containment

What Holds explores the enduring allure of the ceramic box and lidded form—not merely as utilitarian objects, but as vessels of meaning, ritual, and artistic expression. Across cultures and centuries, the act of containment has carried profound significance: from the practical need to store and protect, to the symbolic safeguarding of memory, identity, secrecy, and spirit. In contemporary ceramics, this form continues to provoke: precise and imperfect, functional and symbolic, concealed and revealed. What Holds invites viewers into the tension between interior and exterior, between the known and the hidden. The lid, in this context, is more than a closure—it is a threshold. It shapes perception, interaction, and expectation. Artists featured in this exhibition engage with the lidded form through a range of approaches: * Some lean into the discipline of function—crafting impeccably fitted lids, refined forms, and surface treatments that speak to tradition and utility. * Others subvert those expectations—allowing irregularity, gesture, or abstraction to interrupt the notion of control or containment altogether. At its heart, this exhibition asks: What does it mean to hold, to protect, to conceal, or to release?