Clay. Remember clay? Do you recall when we all had friends who used to don overalls and slave away over a potter’s wheel, splattering everything in the process?

And when your mum used to go to pottery classes? Remember when you came home from school proud of the misshapen lump that you had produced in your own art class?

I’m sure you do. Everyone has some connection to this ancient art form which is why the Museum of Brisbane’s (MoB) exhibition Clay: Collected Ceramics resonates. This is an expansive showcase, a curated collection of contemporary ceramics that elevates the earthen form and cements its place in shaping the stories of Brisbane. It features established artists too, some of whom are no longer with us.

It was particularly poignant to come across two gorgeous pots (ceramic works with intriguing faces dating back to the early 1980s) by the late Lyndal Moor, wife of a close friend and an artist whose work we have in our home. A wedding present actually. Lyndal was well known in Brisbane artistic circles and as a lecturer at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University.

She is one of a collection of well-known ceramic artists including master craftsman Carl McConnell. He passed on his knowledge to son Phillip who is also represented in the exhibition. Milton Moon is another significant name along with Kevin Grealy. And of course, you have to include the late great Gwyn Hanssen Pigott whose pieces sit like the still points at the center of the universe. She had a studio out Ipswich way in her later years.

The exhibition also includes newly commissioned works by Bonnie Hislop, Steph Woods, Kenji Uranishi, Jane du Rand and Nicolette Johnson.

Bonnie Hislop’s are particularly accessible pieces and she likes to decorate her works – like cakes – with words. Not Happy Birthday but things like Welcome to The Party, I Feel Pretty and A Bit Much although none of her pieces are a bit much at all. They are clever and colorful and they even look a tad edible.

There are videos of some of the artists discussing their works and of ceramic works being created which is always fascinating. It’s a very earthy business making pots, or ceramics works or whatever you want to call them. Of course, they don’t always come out as planned which is sometimes part of the beauty.

On your way into the exhibition – and on the way out – you will pass cabinets chock full of ceramic works. That is a display entitled Commune which features around 300 vessels lent by Brisbane’s ceramics community, from professional to amateurs and it’s a really charming collection that shows the infinite variety available and it proves that people are still out there madly making things with clay.

Late in 2022 MoB put out a call to the Greater Brisbane Region for people to submit a “memory vessel” and the response was overwhelming. Participants were urged to interpret the idea as they wished, the only rules being that the vessel had to be original, to conform to size constraints and to have been fired. This sort of community collaboration is something MoB does so well.

One of the most stunning pieces is also the most ephemeral, a wall piece, the work of MoB artist in residence Jody Rallah, a Yuggera/Yuggerabul – Biri/Bindal woman. It’s a landscape painted in clay and ochre and refers not to the collectability of clay but to clay’s roles in Country, its versatile, transformative character and its intimate centrality to the life of first nations people of Australia. She used unfired fragments to create this wall painting.

The works in the exhibition span six decades and range from humble functional pieces to conceptual objects that are more sculptural and everywhere you look there is something that grabs your attention … from the highly stylized contemporary pieces of Steph Woods to the more understated works of the past masters. There’s even one featuring an habitue of our Brisbane suburbs.

Thriving: Brisbane bush turkeys is a charming piece by Jane du Rand, an assemblage using glazed and unglazed ceramic pieces, smali (a type of unglazed glass) and porcelain tiles.

With the heads of bush turkeys sticking out the top. What fun.

Clay: Collected Ceramics is on at Museum of Brisbane, Level 3, City Hall, King George Square until October 22; free entry