KATHERINE GLENDAY & PETER SPELIOPOULOS

Ateliers Courbet is pleased to present a summer exhibition featuring new ceramic works by two of the gallery's longstanding artists, whose practices converge on the transformative potential of clay and fire. Both Katherine Glenday and Peter Speliopoulos explore the vessel as a site of vulnerability and resilience, challenging their respective materials—porcelain and stoneware—to expressive limits. Each of their pieces defies the materiality of their chosen clay, while both artists introduce explorations in elevating their works on hand-formed ceramic bases that become integral to the sculptural form.

The exhibition expands upon both artists' comprehensive bodies of work and their ongoing dedication to exploring time-honored ceramic techniques through contemporary interpretation. Glenday and Speliopoulos create pieces anchored in cultural heritage through their concept, materiality, and craftsmanship details, researching and developing traditional methods with personal artistic vision.

ollowing her recent series of colored cylindrical vessels, Katherine Glenday returns to her roots with white slip-cast porcelain and natural oxides gathered from her native South Africa. Her porcelain works explore the contrasts of emphasized organic textures on soft skin-like surfaces, stretching the matter to its thinnest translucent skin. By interrupting traditional porcelain casting techniques, Katherine is inspired by the ways that forms might fold inward upon themselves, lean into structural vulnerability, or collapse unexpectedly.

Complementing Glenday's material investigations, Peter Speliopoulos presents works from his ongoing exploration of mythological and psychological symbolism. His work is rooted in the artist's passion for texture and material form, with each piece crafted in black stoneware ceramic. Beginning on the wheel before evolving through meticulous hand-sculpting, Speliopoulos's vessels serve as contemporary interpretations of ancient forms inspired by his Greek heritage and personal mythology.

The new works emphasize both artists' commitment to celebrating the vessel as both functional object and spiritual conduit—shaped by personal history, natural materials, and the transformative forces that define the ceramic medium itself.