Contemporary ceramics in India has seen an explosion of expression in the last 20 years. The artists in the Ceramic Spectrum 2016 have varied approaches to clay — the basic material of all ceramic production. While some develop the vessel form, others explore new ideas. The inspiration, content and the context within which they locate themselves are wide-rang-ing, reflecting their individual aesthetic concerns.

Auroville based Adil Writer pays tribute to Goa’s legend, cartoonist Mario Miranda, in a series of bowls and platters. Ray Meeker, a guru to many a ceramic artist in India today, makes a strong visual statement with his signature wood fired tea bowls which marry the functional with the sculptural. Ranjita Bora, who works at the Golden Bridge Pottery in Pondicherry, Supriya Menon Meneghetti from Auroville and Pune based architect and teacher Veena Chandran initially locate their work in vessel forms, but extend them to create new meanings. Amrita Dhawan contemplates the nature of time — geological and personal, and her philosophical preoccupations find ex-pression in weathered rock forms. Rugged landscapes of the high Himalayas are the seed for much of Delhi based architect Vineet Kacker’s work, as are the Buddhist shrines which dot that landscape. The colours and forms encountered in travels through rural India, and more particularly Gujarat, find shape in Auroville based Rakhee Kane’s work. Shampa Shah’s exten-sive study of folk art surfaces in her elegant figures. Sharbani Das Gupta is concerned about the rapacious onslaught on the environment and her work draws attention to this. The sea inspires Goa based artists, Thomas Louis and Sylvia Kerkar and the creatures that live within it are their focus.

The love that Leila Bose Powar, who left us last year, had for animals is legendary. Her paintings of warm eyed horses stay with us, as do the miniature animals she painstakingly handcrafted in clay. The works in this exhibition include a series of tiles with beautifully hand painted birds. Ange Peter, who lives in Auroville’s forest belt, uses ash glazes made from local woods and is known for the Japanese Haiyu slipware technique. Anjani Khanna’s large, composite human and animal sculp-tures are a tongue in cheek expression of my observations of life.
The Ceramic Spectrum at The Cube in Goa presents the best of Indian ceramics and we hope that you will enjoy sharing our journey with this versatile medium.

— Anjani Khanna & Sylvia Kerkar