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8 Visual Arts November and December 2025 Featuring artworks by some of the leading sculptors and innovators working with ceramics in the UK today, Subversive Forms shines a spotlight on contemporary artists who push the boundaries of possibility with clay. Each selected artist disrupts and manipulates traditional ceramic perception, creating enigmatic artworks which challenge the preconceived understanding of contemporary ceramic practice. The exhibition is a celebration of the dichotomy between the making process and the fi nal fi red ceramic form. The works included highlight clay’s ability to serve artists as a material demanding precisely executed control and as a medium for communicating gestural emotional responses. The works included lead the visitor on a journey between carved naked stoneware to highly glazed porcelain, between pops of incredible colour, to works of mixed media. The unifying link between all exhibiting artists is their ability to work beyond the constraints of expectation, with incredible Subversive Forms individual approaches pushing the medium beyond the functional, using clay as a non-apologetic material for sculpture. Drawing upon Chippenham Museum’s Modern and Contemporary Art Collection, Melissa Barnett, Head of Services at Chippenham Museum, says: “This exhibition of astonishing ceramic sculpture allows the museum to continue welcoming visitors to view pieces held in our Modern and Contemporary Art Collection and creates further understandings of the signi fi cance of the work we hold on both a local and national level.” Exhibition curator Sarah Purvey explains: “This fascinating exhibition of fi red clay artworks further expands the dialogue between ceramic expectation and contemporary ceramic practice. Each of the exhibiting artists subverts the traditionally understood rules regarding ceramic process and pushes forward with groundbreaking technique and masterly understanding of the medium.” The featured artists in Subversive Forms include Dan Allen, Felicity Aylieff, Kelly Allsopp, Halima Cassell, Matthew Chambers, Claire Curneen, Richard Deacon, Laura Ford, Keith Harrison, Mimi Joung, Jonathan Keep, Nicholas Lees, Claire Loder, Sam Lucas, Peter Randall Page, Sarah Purvey, Matt Smith, Jo Taylor, Annie Turner, Patricia Volk, and Maria Wodjat. 14 November - 21 February: Chippenham Museum, CHIPPENHAM, Monday - Saturday 10am - 4pm. chippenham.gov.uk/chippenham- museum. CLAIRE CURNEEN ‘PILGRIM’ (2021) NICHOLAS LEES ‘SOLARIS’ (2003) JONATHAN KEEP ‘SEED MORPHOLOGY’ (2025) Follow evolvermagazine on Instagram