Say it with clay

“Ceramics tell us stories about different cultures,” says Philadelphia-based artist Roberto Lugo, whose much-hyped and monumental hip-hop-influenced pots weave together narratives about his upbringing in Pennsylvania and his Puerto Rican heritage. “If you look at Peruvian ceramics, you know something about weddings; or Greek pottery, you know that people used to eat lying down. I love to think that in thousands of years from now, people will know a little bit about the community and culture that I grew up in because I made it in clay.”

My Shot (Lin-Manuel Miranda) Urn, 2022, by Roberto Lugo

Celia Cruz Amphora, 2022, by Roberto Lugo

The pot as decorative storyboard was popularised by the ancient Greeks. The tradition continued across Italian Renaissance maiolica, Dutch delftware, and the blue and white chinoiserie Willow pattern popularised in Britain in the 18th century. Today, the artist perhaps best known for pictorial pottery is Grayson Perry, but a number of contemporary ceramicists are telling tales in clay. 

Following a group show at the Smithsonian last year, Lugo’s recent exhibition at R & Company in New York drew upon personal narratives, “remixing” historical inspirations with “motifs inspired by the street, like fire hydrants and graffiti”. He highlights a piece that references 15th-century Florentine sculptor Luca della Robbia. “The original was the Madonna and child; mine is of me and my mother, but the young boy is wearing a ski mask and a gold bracelet,” he explains. “The point I’m trying to make is that a lot of people see young men of colour as future criminals.” 

Before Sleep by Vicky Lindo and Bill Brookes

Birth, Marriage and Death by Vicky Lindo and Bill Brookes

The narrative thread in ceramics runs from Devon-based Vicky Lindo and Bill Brookes’s sgraffito (scratched into the glaze) storyboards – one series pieces together the life of Lindo’s late, estranged father, who travelled to England from Jamaica as part of the Windrush generation – to Nadira Husain’s elegant and often anthropomorphic vessels, their painstakingly handpainted motifs inspired by her European and Indian heritage.

London-and-Corfu-based Agalis Manessi is often commissioned to create specific pieces commemorating events and individuals. One vase remembers a client’s aunt, the main portrait surrounded by “narrative elements about the things she liked, her hobbies, stories about her”. Another piece celebrates the bicentenary of the Greek Revolution in 2021. 

Fish on Hips, 2023, by Nadira Husain

Hand on Hips, 2023, by Nadira Husain

Frida, 2018, by Agalis Manessi

Kimono Girl, 2023, by Agalis Manessi

“I think of myself as a mixture of a potter and a painter,” says Manessi from her Corfu studio. For the past 50 years, the former ballet student has been creating ceramics using the ancient technique of maiolica, painting in coloured oxides on top of a white tin glaze; collectors of her work include interior designer Nina Campbell, Antony Gormley and Paul Smith. Her work is now celebrated in a monograph, A Journey Painted in Clay (Unicorn, £25). Whether her works are playful “catamorphic vessels” or characterful plate portraits, “there’s always a story to them”, she says. “One piece can have a conversation with another, but I want them to have a bit of mystery. People can make their own narrative.” 

Sue and Erika Kickboxing, 2022, by Jennifer Rochlin

Skipping Rocks on Gabrielino, 2023, by Jennifer Rochlin

“The way you walk around a vessel and literally see the images unfold feels very filmic,” says artist Jennifer Rochlin about why pots make such a perfect vessel on which to tell a story. Like Manessi, the Los Angeles-based artist takes a painterly approach. She focuses on capturing quotidian moments – a piece recently shown at Mariane Ibrahim’s Chicago gallery depicts a trail walk with her sons near her home. “Right now, I’m trying to do one scene across six pots, almost like an animation,” says Rochlin, who will have a solo show at Hauser & Wirth’s Hamptons gallery this May. 

David kills goliatha, 2015, by Katy Stubbs

David wished he could be more like arnie, 2015, by Katy Stubbs

Brixton-based Katy Stubbs creates garish and gruesome flights of fiction and fantasy. “The first ceramics I made were four plates telling the story of ‘David and Goliatha’,” she says, “about a man who wanted to have sex with this giant woman, but ends up killing her.” A series created for a recent show at London’s Lyndsey Ingram gallery tells the “story of a magician who has dressed up as a cowboy to trick a girl into going on a date”; it runs across multiple pieces, and incorporates a subplot about a lobster planning to avenge the deaths of his restaurant tank-mates. She smiles: “But he ends up being eaten anyway.” Comedy or tragedy, it’s wonderfully off the wall.