Theaster Gates: A Clay Sermon

This publication accompanies a major new exhibition of Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates (b.1973), focussing on his clay-based work, collaborative projects and large scale sculptures and installations since 2005. Gates’s interdisciplinary practice draws on his training in both urban planning and pottery, resulting in work which aims to instigate the creation of cultural communities and the recirculation of art-world capital, all the time considering the notion of Black space and ideology. Fully illustrated with examples of pottery, sculptures, installations, films and archive materials, the book also documents a new film by Gates and features essays from leading craft historians and writers. This in-depth exploration of Gates’s work is timely and relevant now in a world where a new generation are raising questions through making, identity and activism.