Richard Stratton’s ceramic vessels combine wheel-thrown, press-moulded, and hand-built components. The Wellington artist mines his extensive knowledge of ceramics history; works in the show make reference to fifteenth-century Yixing clay teapots and eighteenth-century Whieldon ware. Although Stratton’s ceramics mimic antique forms, his practice is contemporary, addressing such subjects as fatherhood, nuclear war, anorexia, famine, television, pornography, religion, and politics. In a series of plates, he contrasts a blue fish-scale pattern—inspired by the blue-and-white porcelain imported into Europe from China in the eighteenth century—with images of women engaged in acts of sexual bondage. Stratton delights in the conflation of high and low, revelling in impropriety.
