Chris Keenan

Chris Keenan has been making pots for nearly 25 years. Following an apprenticeship with the potter and writer Edmund de Waal in the mid-nineties he set up in his own studio in South London at the end of 1998, where he still works. Function plays a large part in his making - pots that will do a job if you want them to - but over recent years he has also been making interactive groupings of pots and a series of “scapes” that contain a narrative expressed by the physical relationship between one pot and another. The pots are thrown Limoges porcelain and he uses a restricted palette of just three glazes - a mirror black/brown tenmoku; a pale blue celadon; and a green glaze that is the result of combining the dry fettlings of the other two glazes - a serendipitous marriage.

Solo Exhibitions

2018
Beaux Arts, Bath
New Craftsman, St Ives
2016
Beaux Arts, Bath
houseplace, Blackwell, The Arts & Crafts House, Cumbria
New Craftsman, St Ives
2015
Beaux Arts, Bath
2014
New Craftsman, St Ives
The Scottish Gallery,Edinburgh
2013
Oxford Ceramics Gallery, Oxford
Beaux Arts, Bath
2012
New Craftsman, St Ives
2011
Beaux Arts, Bath
2009
Beaux Arts, Bath
2008
Roger Billcliffe Fine Art, Glasgow
2006
Beaux Arts, Bath

Group Exhibitions

2019
November Pots ,The Rowley Gallery, London
All in the Detail, Lotte Inch Gallery, York
Re:Collected, Bluecoat Display Centre, Liverpool
Miar Arts, Brighton
60at60, Bluecoat Display Centre, Liverpool
Open House, Miar Arts, Hove
2018
Worked Surface, Jointure Studios, Ditchling
Porcelain, Clay College, Stoke
Ceramics at Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire
2017
New Horizons, Joanna Bird, London
Functional Beauty, Jointure Studios, Ditchling
Protégés, Bluecoat Display Centre, Liverpool
A Fine Line, Cambridge Contemporary Art
2016
In the Window, Bluecoat Display Centre
Life, Still, Candida Stevens Fine Art, Chichester
2015
Made With Love, Studio Eleven Gallery, Hull
Bravura, The Blue Egg Gallery, Wexford
Celadon & Tenmoku, Schaller Gallery, St Joseph, Michigan
Crafted Alumni, Fortnum & Mason, London
Artists in Residency Exhibition, Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art, Japan
2014
Vessels, Contemporary British Ceramics, Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art, Japan
Out of Sight, CAA, London
Craft Into Industry, CAA, London
2013
Make It Slow, part of Art Unpacked, a Chrysalis Arts project, a UK touring exhibition
British Ceramics Biennial, Spode Factory Site, Stoke-on-Trent
Cheongju Ceramic Biennale, Cheongju, Korea
Ceramics Now, Gallery at Bevere, Worcestershire