Julian Stair (born 1955 in Bristol) is an English potter, academic and writer. Concerned with questions of functionality and site-specific installation, his work re-examines familiar historical pottery idioms within a contemporary context and celebrates the social, cultural and multi-sensory aspect of pottery. He makes groups of work using a variety of materials, from fine glazed porcelain to coarse engineering brick clays, which provide a rich palette of colours and textures. His work ranges in scale from hand-sized cups and teapots to monumental jars at over 6 feet tall and weighing half a ton.
Stair has exhibited internationally over the last 30 years and has work in over twenty public collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, British Council, American Museum of Art & Design, Hong Kong Museum of Art and the Boymans Museum, Netherlands. In 2004 he was awarded the European Achievement Award by the World Crafts Council for the project Extended Inhumation, and received a Queen Elizabeth Scholarship to research the making of monumental ceramics at Wienerberger’s brick factory in Sedgley. In 2008 the Art Fund purchased Monumental Jar V for Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (mima).
His most recent project is the solo exhibition Quietus: The Vessel, Death and the Human Body which has been commissioned by mima and supported by Arts Council England. It runs between 13 July 2012 – 11 November 2012 and will tour to National Museum Cardiff and Winchester Cathedral in 2013. The exhibition addresses the containment of the human body in death and features a series of funerary works, from cinerary jars to life-size sarcophagi.
Read more about Julian Stair: Education and Work, Academic Career, Selected Exhibitions and Installations, Awards, Nominations and Grants, Selected Public Collections
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—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
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