A Clay Sermon

“In the beginning was clay. Clay was without form,” he declares in his 2021 film A Clay Sermon. Making pots is important as a religious and social experience, as well as a creative one; Gates’ identity is bound up with making, researching and teaching about ceramics and its history. “We love the wheel,” he sings as he throws a pot while his group the Black Monks improvise snatches of jazz and gospel. The film was made at the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts, a former brick factory in Montana where, earlier this year, Gates was artist-in-residence. The process – from digging the clay to working on the wheel and firing the pot – is filmed as though it were an alchemical ritual; pacing round the derelict premises in his long dark coat, the artist resembles a priest.