Ceramic Raku bowl by Tracy Keith

Earth Chalice 3 is a ceramic sculptural Raku fired bowl by New Zealand ceramicist Tracy Keith. He explores our relationship with the earth and  human settlement, through the clay medium. Created with a rich brown clay, the raku process has created surfaces of matt and gloss, light and dark.

"Ko te oko mātauranga, tō tātou oko taiao /The vessel of knowledge is the vessel
of our natural environment"

‘When I build ceramic works, I intentionally avoid the instantly recognisable and instead create abstracted forms that evoke something ancient and timeless’ Tracy says.

Dimensions 13.5cm H x 21cm W. Raku fired ceramic. Weight 1.2kg

Hand crafted in New Zealand

Raku firing is a method of removing the hot ceramic work from the kiln before it has cooled and then placed in an open air container filled with combustible materials which smoke, this leads to unpredictable colours and unrefined markings on the body of the work.

Know your maker

Tracy Keith is a ceramic artist based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has been a practising artist for over 20 years and holds a MFA from Whitecliffe College of Art and Design, Auckland. He has exhibited in major galleries and museums throughout New Zealand.

"My vessels are a sculptural continuum of the non-place we tread, stripped back to a rawness through growth and divisions of human settlements inhabited in crevices and folds of the earth that intrusive human construct.  The attachments are like shards of  earth splintering the flesh of the land protruding and piercing the surfaces creating divisions that disrupted the natural order of the container, they are non-utilitarian in a sense they have become unusable and contain the memory of a vessel. They are growths within the land to compensate misuse of the whenua (land), which is becoming unusable and unrecognisable, objects that intentionally avoid the instantly recognisable and instead create abstracted forms that evoke memories of the whenua and that reflect something ancient and timeless."