Passage - Ceramics at the Hyatt, Chennai

The Golden Bridge Pottery has trained over 100 students, many of whom are now serious artists working in clay. As curator I worked with seven of these artists, five sharing my own studio. The breadth of possibility expressed in Rajeev’s brief invited a varied and exciting opportunity for ceramic artists working in an atmosphere where a scale that many had considered inconceivable was a real option. Two years and forty firings of my 140 - cubic - foot kiln later, and the ceramic is installed. In Auroville, Adil Writer and Michel Hutin have done another dozen firings. Two pergolas. Aarti Vir and Rakhee Kane each made a henge - like grouping of fourteen ceramic pillars. Supporting a dense plant cover, they evoke the beginnings of the built environment. Post and beam. Shelter. Connection , Sharbani Das Gupta’s bench of broken earth carved with intersecting ripples of water is an exploration of the underlying interdependence between and of ourselves.

Antra Sinha’s journey from a tiny thumb - pinched shape to a five - foot form extended her every skill. Tetrarc is an exploration of form, weight and flight.

In A Road Less Travelled Adil Writer approaches the monumental with the incremental, creating a swooping array of 500 palm - sized ‘treasure boxes’ that belie the actual scale.

Queen , Ashwini Bhat’s elemental form with Harappan references evokes time, memory and of course the bee.

Michel Hutin’s elegantly undulating pillars, centered on the water body, are a delightful play of positive and negative.

Cluster , Deborah Smith’s bouquet of ceramic flowers, draws on her Golden Bridge Pottery repertory of functional forms and her signature brush work.