Ruth King

Ruth King is one of Britain’s pre-eminent salt glaze potters, an artist who, on the face of it, makes vessels of great simplicity. But in fact her pots radically and complexly reinvent ceramic form. King slab-builds, cuts and alters, creating large and impressive structures that quietly deviate from the norm, making bowls, bottles and tripod pieces that she extends and distorts, playing with different notions of shape, volume and interiority. Richly coloured – the tones range from rich rusts and ochres to luminous greens and silvery greys – these pots show how convincingly sculptural and elemental modern ceramics can be. Born in Enfield, she trained at Camberwell College of Art and Crafts in the 1970s, and now lives and works in York.

David Whiting