By Millen Brown-Ewens
More than thirty years after his untimely passing, Angus Suttie and his ceramics refuse categorisation. For the UK pottery establishment, his evocative and celebratory works represent humanism, boldness, and freedom, reflecting not only the nuances of his lived experience but also a vital and unique form of activism that chimes with contemporary resonance.
A new retrospective at The Sunday Painter, London casts a revelatory light on the trailblazing life and art of Suttie (1946-1993), exhibiting a collection of his awkwardly beautiful pots of pride that accentuate his immense contribution to postmodern art. The works on show comprise part of a private collection of Suttie’s ceramics in the care of Jeffrey Weeks, – curator, executor and trustee of the artist’s estate and Suttie’s former partner.
Born in the rural, conservative Scottish town of Tealing in 1946, Angus Suttie had a sense of being an outsider from the very start. “Growing up queer in such a place, where homophobia was built in, meant that feelings were hidden and everyone, including Angus’ family, found it difficult to express the love they undoubtedly felt for him,” Weeks tells Ceramics Now.
In the late 1960s, Suttie gravitated towards London, where he began experimenting with ceramics between a long series of casual and unfulfilling jobs before enrolling at the Camberwell School of Art in 1975, delving into the experimental ethos that defined the institution during that period. “1970s Britain was a time of huge political, economic and cultural change that was reflected in our personal lives and art,” recalls Weeks. “Angus was a student at Camberwell when the canons of ceramics were being challenged and his studies provided a means to channel the changes in his own life and outlook into a creative form. Through pottery, he could express his deepest feelings and commitments while playing with traditional forms and challenging expectations.”
Philosophically, Suttie’s ceramics are fastened to the values of the Gay Liberation Front and later the Gay Left, a collective of men committed to the integration of socialist and sexual politics, to which both he and Weeks belonged. Within this space, Suttie came to embrace his intersectional identity as a working-class gay man, using his practice to explore ideas of mortality, memory, and the human condition, often with an underlying queer sensibility, an audacious statement in a relatively conservative craft world. As American West Coast ceramist Scott Chamberlin wrote in 1994: “For years in conversations with Angus, he spoke about the struggle to get his work to be more reflective of his life as a gay man. He was looking for permission, longing for release.”
The pieces on exhibit at The Sunday Painter aren’t the product of protest in the sense that they are angry and violent but instead sensitive, human and considerate. In Suttie’s own words, he expressed that “history is not passive but demands an active relationship with the living.’
Throughout his life he endeavoured to create pots that “shock us, or console us, that are life-affirming, or that haunt us”, addressing contemporary struggles. “I want pots that make the ideal alive and believable,” he said.
Using the domesticated objects of quotidian life – jugs, teapots, eggcups, and saucers – as his starting point, Suttie subverted the functional and stylistic expectations of clay in favour of a decidedly more sculptural expression. Horns protrude at odd angles from vases and totems, and the elongated spouts of surrealist teatime accoutrements wind complex routes that force the viewer to move around, cock their head and bend their bodies just to keep track. “Since pottery has its origins in domestic form, it’s natural that Angus would start here,” says Weeks. “He loved the shape of the teapot and had a vast collection of them from around the world. This and other domiciliary shapes provided a time-honoured discipline from which he could follow his imagination and experiment with form.”
Suttie’s works don’t wholly refuse functionalism, indeed many of his pieces could still be used for their intended purpose, instead they playfully mock it, espousing post-Modernist ideals and particularly those of the New Ceramicists, that elevate ceramics into vessels for humour, whimsy and political commentary. “I started by wanting to make pots which were a reaction against the white, factory-produced earthenware available in every high street,” an article by Christopher Andreae records Suttie saying.
By primarily employing hand-building techniques, especially coiling and slab-building, Suttie was able to create highly individualised, irregular sculptures that did not conform to the cylindrical shape often produced by wheel-thrown pottery or the precision and symmetry associated with Modernism. His hand-building process allowed for more personal and intimate engagement with the clay, leaving traces of the maker’s hand.
Suttie’s ceramics are chimeric composites not only in the formal sense but also insofar as they drink deep from a well of cultural and historic references, revealing his inquisitiveness as an artist. Week’s describes him as well educated in the visual arts and history of crafts with an exceptional eye for detail. “For Angus there was no ‘casual’ visit to a museum or gallery,” Weeks shares. “He would study what he saw and make notes or sketches, later bringing these to the studio.”
In addition to studying the pottery of Picasso, as well as the surrealists and cubists –a learning that manifests in such pieces as Sculptural Vessel (circa 1987) and Jug Form (circa 1985)– Suttie also developed a keen interest in pre-Columbian architecture. This influence is evident in his later works; large-scale monolithic pots that possess a simpler, quieter presence. What this retrospective lays bare is that Suttie’s practice was eclectic and open-minded but never derivative. “Throughout the exhibition you can see a sort of unity, both in his experimentalism and imaginative iconoclasm,” says Weeks. “There is a constant evolution, both in technique, content and form yet from the start, his pots are very Angus, immediately identifiable.”
Although his work is assuredly underscored by thoughtful intention and critical provocation, there is an irreverent edge to Suttie’s practice that concedes pleasure in making. Doodle Plate (1982) for example and Ring (1987) with its cheeky phallic mascot embody a playful, spontaneous aesthetic that centres queer joy. This sentiment is perhaps most obvious in works that contain personal confessions such as Saucer (1985) inscribed with the words’ your bum is the best’ on the face and ‘You Are Callipygian’ on the enlarged lip. The use of text on clay provides us with a direct, emotional connection to Suttie. In Vase (1982), there is a vulnerability in the command, or perhaps question ‘Love me’, poetically answered with the ‘Love You’ that appears on the pots reverse.
Suttie was also unafraid of using a bright, sometimes clashing palette of primaries in loud geometric patterns and employed surface decoration in a manner that feels both joyous and expressive, as if the objects were alive, celebrating their own form. He understood but never obnoxiously presented the personal as political, each non-conformity a demonstration of the conviction and endurance of artistic resistance.
Tragically, in 1993, at just 46 years old, Suttie passed away due to an HIV-related illness after a prolific but brief career spanning little more than a decade. As illness became increasingly intertwined with his life, his art gave way to a more subdued expression; his palette shifting to incorporate increasingly muted hues reminiscent of ancient funerary sculpture.
“If his earlier works are about play and challenge, Angus’ later pieces are about memory and memorialisation, about loss and celebration,” says Weeks. “All are about life and love, but his lived experience got harder, the springs of joy were blocked.” In 1984, Suttie lost his then-partner to AIDS and was diagnosed himself shortly after. Living with a deadly disease in a climate of hate, it’s no wonder that he felt an urgent need to channel this frustration, fear, and sense of loss into his work—his ceramics became not just a means of communication, but a way of memorialising his life, asserting his humanity and vitality in a world that often sought to erase it.
“What struck me most at the opening of the current exhibition at The Sunday Painter, was how many people commented on the freshness and contemporary nature of Angus’ work,” reflects Weeks. “He spoke to his time, but he obviously still speaks to many people today. That’s a wonderful tribute for someone whose life and work ended 35 years ago.”
Millen Brown-Ewens is an art and culture writer and book publicist based in London. She has written for Artsy, AnOther, Dazed, DAMN, Elephant, Huck and DAMN amongst others. Follow the author on Instagram.
Angus Suttie is on view at The Sunday Painter, London until October 26, 2024.
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Photos courtesy The Sunday Painter
