Dutch Artist Wessel Verrijt likes to work with used, discarded objects and materials, because they carry the traces of time, of handling and utilisation; they already contain their own stories. So how to approach clay, this apparently undefined, a-historic mass that you have to shape in some way? After an initial struggle, Verrijt befriended the clay. He organically built several large containers and relied on the firing process to transform them into a new material he would ‘find’ when the kiln door opened. The resulting shells – or perhaps pieces of armour – became part of the large ceremonial figures he made for the H3H biennial in Oosterhout, where they welcomed the visitors with their somewhat eery and yet not altogether unfriendly presence.

Marine Protected Areas in the Dutch North-Sea are habitually disturbed by bottom trawlers. To provide the areas with additional protection, Jonat Deelstra wants to turn them into underwater graveyards, where grave rest has to be honoured just as it is on land. During his residency, he built several ceramic vessels large enough to hold a folded dead person’s body. Sunk to the bottom of the sea, the vessels will attract marine life like molluscs, weeds, crabs or starfish to restore the habitats damaged by commercial fishing. Deelstra also created open ceramic coffins reminiscent of small boats or rectangular shells to bury the deceased in a more traditional, horizontal position. Marine scientists welcome his ecological activism and funeral directors are happy to include this seaman’s grave in their services. Meanwhile, Deelstra’s grandfather found a final resting place off the coast from Kenya, in a coral reef restoration zone.

If clay were a language, Marieke Coppens was an analphabetic. In preparation of her EKWC residency the artist and guru learned Hittite, an extinct language written in cuneiform script on clay tablets. In this light, it only made sense for her to use the Pollard script, an alphabet developed for an unwritten Southeast Asian language, to decorate her works. These include an imperfect infinite circle and an imperfect infinite square, made up of tiles embossed with fluorescent signs that emit an otherworldly glow in the dark. The mosaics don’t communicate a specific message; the signs and tiles form an endless pattern of repetition and difference. Coppens made the signs mixing fluorescent pigments with Egyptian paste, a self-glazing mass fired at low temperatures. To offset her carbon footprint, the artist worked as a volunteer planting trees (@meerbomen.nu) for at least 29 hours, which equals 10% of her total EKWC budget.