The participants in Beyond Earth have been chosen because their work embraces similar themes. The participating ceramists have each developed a language that utilises clay’s plasticity to communicate their ideas. They have folded, woven, impressed, stretched or manipulated the clay to express individual concepts enabled by the plastic qualities of clay.
The work in Beyond Earth is grounded in a solid knowledge of particular clays, and their physical properties. Those using the wheel to form work throw shapes which they subsequently distort. Collapse appears to be immanent. The freshness of this work is reliant on an intimate knowledge of materials and expertise in the making processes.

Some of the work exhibited acknowledges the limits of pure clay and have integrated alternative material to extend clay’s sculptural possibilities. An inherent limitation of clay is its lack of tensile strength. This means it has definite limits in terms of its ability to span or cantilever. Clay’s strength is in compression and the introduction of a material such as fibre or steel extends its making vocabulary. This is seen in Alliband’s fibre clay work and those using paperclay - Monks, Hay and Srivilasa.
These ceramists, integrating alternative materials, do so to achieve forms that are either impossible or very difficult to achieve with clay only. However, they persevere with clay as a making medium, because of the finishes possible when clay is fired. New technology can be difficult, even frightening, but freeing in terms of sculptural possibilities.

1 A symposium and exhibition at the Ewart Gallery, Workshop Arts Centre, September 2003.
2 Margaret Farmer, unpublished review, 2003

3 A description of S. Harrison’s fibre clay is found in PIA 41#3, 2002, p 64-69.
4 Gary Healey