Pavilion Review: Adam Buick, 'Raw Earth' London
Alex Whittaker caught up with artist Adam Buick for his latest exhibition ‘Raw Earth’ at Contemporary Ceramics, London. Situated directly opposite the British Museum, the exhibition runs from Thursday 6th March through to Saturday 29th March 2025 and coincides with the launch of Buick’s new book of the same title, Raw Earth. The exhibition provides a unique opportunity to encounter Adam’s latest body of work first-hand, while the book provides an in-depth study of the life and practice of the pioneering Pembrokeshire-based ceramicist.
A link to the exhibition website can be found here and the book is available through Graffeg here.
Large spherical white porcelain vessels, often milky in colour and smooth in surface have been made on the Korean Peninsula since at least the late seventeenth century. These now iconic vessels, which originated during the Joseon Dynasty period and were never produced elsewhere, have come to be viewed as synonymous with Korean history and culture. The epithet of ‘moon jar’, which no doubt in some way derived from their physical characteristics, arrived much later, during the 1950s, by which time the jars had begun to be dispersed, appreciated and reinterpreted in the West. What was once a pure, functional form, visually simple and undecorated in a reflection of Neo-Confucian values began to accumulate various layers of meaning, built up through the passage of time. These histories, some of which are colonial following the Japanese occupation of the early 20th century have more recently become distilled through visual language, so that the moon jar is now embedded with a multiplicity of meaning and references, the core elements of which can perhaps be said to symbolize a form of Korean national identity [1].
Moon jar (백자대호 白磁大壺), British Museum number 1999,0302.1
One such moon jar purchased in 1935 by Bernard Leach, was taken to England and gifted to Lucie Rie. The same jar now resides in the British Museum and is often referenced as marking the beginning of the transmission of Korean visual culture to England. By this time, Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada’s founding experiments at the now well known Leach Pottery at St Ives in Cornwall were underway, giving birth to a new form of self-directed creative practice, which eventually became known as British studio pottery. In contemporary ceramics, the moon jar has become a common starting point for a multitude of potters, particularly outside of East Asia, where the popularization of Korean visual culture has led to an increased interest in and appreciation of the cultural histories of East Asia. As such, purists might express that for a ceramic to qualify as a true moon jar, a form must be pure white, which not only reflects the experience of gazing at the full moon [2] but also the trend for sparse or barely decorated ceramics made during Joseon era prohibitions. True moon jars, then, are firmly grounded in the geographical, historical and cultural origin of their making. However, in ‘Raw Earth’, Adam Buick’s latest exhibition, the iconic image of the moon jar initiates a radical departure point for a series of captivating and, often unpredictable, outcomes. The ‘pure form’ of the jar becomes a blank canvas for the imprint of materials local to Buick’s studio in south Wales, at once presenting a series of open-ended questions about our sense of belonging in the natural world, and where indigenous cultural practices might begin and end.
It would be a mistake to assume that Adam Buick’s work can be easily situated in long line of British studio potters who have borrowed formal attributes and techniques from the history of ceramics in East Asia. This meditative and personal practice quietly argues for a deeper understanding - beyond the art object itself - of our relationship to time and place. [3] Indeed Buick’s performative act of traversing the natural landscape either to collect materials, deposit jars and various other crafted objects for site specific installations, roots him as much within the tradition of land artists such as Robert Smithson and Richard Long as it does within any craft based tradition of makers, of any culture.
Larger jars at Adam Buick ‘Raw Earth’
A series of Buick’s miniature landscape studies at Contemporary Ceramics, London
Buick’s studio is based upon the St David’s peninsula in South Wales, close to the dramatic Pembrokeshire coastline, which has allowed him to form an intimate connection to the surrounding environment. Hiking sometimes for several days and collecting natural materials, such as cuboid crystals of iron pyrite from the pebbles at Porth Mawr, slate from Abereiddi, and even quartz from Caerfai [4]. These found materials often become included in the work, crushed and sprinkled ceremoniously into a glaze recipe or even as more physical rupture. They may even form what Buick calls an ‘inclusion’ – where the extraneous material is embedded directly into the material body of the jars themselves. In the past, these ruptures or inclusions have extended to the man-made, everyday items such as Nokia mobile phones, MP3 players and circuitry, at once rendered eternally useless in the aggressive heat of the firing kiln. In one spectacular, pivotal piece from an earlier solo exhibition at Corvi-Mora in London, also titled ‘Raw Earth’, an entire computer motherboard was fired on top of the jar, the unique colours of the rare earth minerals leaching out across the surface in an arresting fashion. There is a reference here perhaps to the more historical practice of adding materials to the clay body to encourage strength and stability – commonly grog, a pre-fired clay which is ground and added to temper moist clay. But one is also reminded of ancient neolithic practices of burying ‘votive’ objects in the landscape at places of ritual significance, or indeed the Jomon or ‘rope-patterned’ pots of ancient Japan where handmade woven cord was pressed into the surface of the pot, lending them a distinctive identity connected to another material and time entirely.
For Buick’s latest exhibition the pure form of the moon jar functions as a template which at once acknowledges, and breaks with, various cultural histories of ceramic production. The pure milky white porcelain typically used for moon jars is found blushed crimson or deep blue with various natural glaze recipes, or stained with bitter, rust colour drips where pebble inclusions have melted into the surface of the pot, revealing their mineral deposits. Perfection here is allowed only so that it can be disrupted, as the pure form of the conceptualised pot is agitated through various methods of production, firing and experimental glazing techniques, reflecting the landscape through the found materials themselves. In the accompanying book ‘Raw Earth’, the artist describes his journey into the world of ceramics and highlights the pivotal moment of a trip to London, where he first saw a Korean moon jar at the V&A, while it was on loan from the British Museum. This was the very same example gifted from Bernard Leach to Lucie Rie back in 1943, when he also gave her the instruction to ‘keep the Corean pot in memory’, which it seems is exactly what she did. Buick, in turn, was struck by the simplicity of the pot but also, as with Leach and his Japanese contemporaries, by its imperfections and ‘lack of self-consciousness.’ [5] He later travelled to Korea in 2018 to the visit the studio of a contemporary maker, Kang Min Soo, where he noted similarities in terms of their methods of production, citing an interest in the relationship between the mouth of the pot and the foot rim as a shared concern.
Notably, Buick rarely uses the term moon jar to describe his pots, as he rightly feels that the term implies a very specific cultural origin. It is true that his forms are fuller, more voluminous than the historical examples from Korea. His surfaces too are rarely pure white, but rich in the detail of happenstance, with pigments so varied that they start to read as a narrative that is completely their own, despite the repetitious form. This is a visual delight for the visitor to ‘Raw Earth’.
Cabinet display of landscape studies and larger jars at ‘Raw Earth’ 2025
The material of the body - Waun Llodi clay – which is dug up from the moor directly outside Buick’s studio, also roots these pots in the geography of their making. This makes practical sense; many historical kiln sites were located right beside clay pits to reduce the need for transportation of materials, until the pits became exhausted and then the kiln sites would eventually be moved. Indeed, when we talk of various ‘wares’, we are often unwittingly referring to the source of the materials necessary for production as much as we are the region in which they are made. Jingdezhen in China, for example, which is perhaps the best-known site for the vast production of Chinese porcelain wares is a remote and otherwise unremarkable site in a hilly region of Jiangxi Provence, which also happens to be the site of some of the best quality petuntse deposits to be found anywhere in the world. Similarly, in Gwangju, Korea, at the royal kiln site situated outside of modern-day Seoul, white clay and kaolin could be mined in abundance, naturally lending the area to intensive ceramic production. When Shoji Hamada was asked for advice on how to develop a studio practice, he declared ‘don’t learn what I learned, go and learn from where I learned it.’ [6] Perhaps he was referring to Mashiko in Japan, a site rich in clay perfect for ceramics and where early pottery dates back to the Jomon and Yayoi periods – some of the oldest pottery and ceramic vessels known to man. Mashiko become popularized again more recently by craftsmen and women following Hamada’s example of a folk craft coupled with a desire return to a more simplistic, or even authentic, style of living – one that almost immediately chimes with the approach of Adam Buick.
Escarpment Jar, stoneware relief with wood fired patina, Adam Buick.
On the one hand, Buick’s approach to materials does connect him to a long tradition of potters who have emphasised the value in using local materials to facilitate local craft production – a tradition which became a form of resistance to industrialisation both in the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain and subsequent Mingei theory of early 20th century Japan. But these works would not exist without the so called ‘transcultural flows’ of creative exchange exemplified by potters such as Hamada and Leach, hastened by modernisation and increased globalised trade. This presents a conflict which potters such as Leach and Hamada never fully resolved, despite their attempts to promulgate hybrid and folk values respectively. The debate has returned, more recently, in the form of a concern over carbon footprints and an increasing awareness of the distances that the materials and foods which we buy have travelled via land, sea and air, so that we might be able to consume them.
It is primarily Buick’s sensitivity towards time, place and materials that captivates the viewer in ‘Raw Earth’. Upon entering the space there is a sense of immediate calm, punctuated by the looming physical presence of the larger jars placed upon plinths outside of the cabinets, bringing the movement of the viewer in the space to a pause, much as a reader might hesitate at a full stop in between sentences. The cavernous, well-like interior of the pots invite you to pause and take a step closer to fully comprehend their voluminous interior space; an experience which can only be approximated in words since it is not apparent in a description or in images of these pieces alone. As with minimalism, the larger works by Buick gain their strength from the negative, interior space which they demarcate, always and inherently more powerful than an image or any two-dimensional representation of form. This impactful physical presence perhaps in some way accounts for the curatorial decision to prominently include moon jars in museum collections around the world. In this sense, the traditionally large shape and size has added weight the understanding that these are uniquely Korean works of art, representative of a broader cultural history.
The smaller, globular and shiny forms arranged symmetrically as a cabinet display upon the back wall initially appear as a collection of various miniature examples but in fact they read in a much more fluid, almost lyrical language. Buick himself describes the smaller jars as a sketch book or ‘landscape studies’ and it is easy to see why. Happenstance and accidental marks here are rendered in permanence across the body of the pots, bringing a sense of wonder at how such fragile and subtle variations can be captured in the unforgiving and aggressive heat of the wood fired kiln. Some of the smaller pots almost appear to be over baked, but it turns out that they have been fired with seaweed from Porth y Rhaw atop the surface; yet another material collected locally by Buick whilst out in the surrounding landscape. This lends the pots an almost archaic appearance, as if dredged from the submerged depths of a prehistoric ship’s wreckage, part decayed and subsequently covered in barnacles– a maritime vessel filled with ceramic wares en-route from Korea perhaps? An association that Buick, who originally studied archeology and anthropology, seemingly enjoys.
Miniature jars with landscape inclusions - Adam Buick
He describes the space where seaweed grows as ‘the space between tides’ and that ‘adding it to my work connects me to that thin place’. It is hard not to see direct parallels here between the thin place that Buick experiences upon walking along the beach and the point at which the mass of the lands becomes liquid, breaking down into the sea. A direct nod perhaps to the rigid surface of the body of the pot, its desire for permanence and what happens in the alchemical process of applying various glazes, the way that they react and become liquid under the intense heat of the wood fired kiln chamber.
‘Adam Buick, Raw Earth’ runs from Thursday 6th March through to Saturday 29th March 2025 at Contemporary Ceramics, London. More information about Adam’s work can be found at www.adambuick.com
[1] Horlyck, Charlotte – The Making of a Korean Icon (2022), The Art Bulletin, 104:2, 18-141, DOI10.1080/00043079.2022.2000269
[2] The Korean term ‘Dalmaji’ (달맞이) – literally ‘moon watching’, explicitly refers to the act of walking into the mountains to catch sight of the first full moon of the lunar calendar. Luck or good fortune would then be bestowed upon the first person to see the moon, the benefits of which would then apparently last for the rest of the year.
[3] Renton, Andrew – ‘Adam Buick, Raw Earth’ Graffeg 2025, p7
[4] Buick, Adam – ‘Adam Buick, Raw Earth’ Graffeg 2025, p41
[5] Buick, Adam – ‘Adam Buick, Raw Earth’ Graffeg 2025, p33
[6] Bernard Leach – Hamada Potter, Thames and Hudson 1976, p20