Cultivated Primitivity

Heavy hand - Upper ground floor

Anne Tophøj (DK)

9 January – 15 February 2025

Exhibition preview 9 January from 16.00 to 19.00
Art historian William Gelius gives the opening address at 17.00


The living room is a central space. Here we are surrounded by the objects we own – living room objects. Many of them are small ceramic articles that we use for everyday purposes and for decoration: dishes, bowls, candlesticks, flowerpots ... We do not pay them much attention, they quickly blend into everyday life. We use them, handle them, clean them, take them out and put them back – sometimes we forget them entirely, they are simply there. 

These types of items are at the heart of Anne Tophøj’s practice, and her exhibition Heavy hand - Upper ground floor explores living room objects. In improvisations on object categories and ceramic techniques, notes are struck, visions are given tangible form, and movements take shape. 
Anne appears to approach the clay with her senses wide open, searching and registering from the first moment. Her work is spontaneous and experimental; at times quick and rough, as she uses her bare hands, at times gentle and involving simple tools, such as a cutting wire or a worn wooden modelling tool. She has faith in what emerges in her engagement with the clay, trusting the process and the material to find their own way. The pieces give an impression of beginnings; a sense of sketching, of objects that are on the way to finding their form. 
The expression is rough and primitive, delicate and sensitive. The resulting objects evoke a feeling of tracing the spirals of a snail shell with a finger or gazing at the infinitely large movements of a starry sky. There is a microcosm in every object, there is greatness in the smallest things. The objects seem to contain the rhythm of the process that brought them into being.

Anne Tophøj (b. 1960) trained as ceramic artist at the School of Decorative Art, Copenhagen (1984–89) and earned a Master of Industrial Design degree from the Pratt Institute, New York (1990–93). She has taught at the design schools in Copenhagen and Kolding for many years. Among other honours, she has been awarded the Danish Arts Foundation’s three-year working grant, an honorary grant from Danmarks Nationalbank’s Anniversary Foundation, Annie and Otto Johs. Detlef’s Ceramics Prize 2016 and a grant from Otto Haslunds Kunstnerfond as well as the Prince Eugen and Thorvald Bindesbøll medals. 

Selected exhibitions: Alchemists’ Convention, Vejen Art Museum, Vejen, 2023; Afterglow. Nordic Porcelain Forum, Gustavsberg, Sweden, 2022; Ceramic Momentum: Staging the Object, Clay Museum of Ceramic Art Denmark, Middelfart, 2019; Everyday Life, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan, 2017; Elitær Folklore (Elitist Folklore), Copenhagen Ceramics, 2012; Mindcraft 12, Danish Crafts, Milan Design Week, Italy, 2012; Statistics >< Ceramics: New Danish Ceramics, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, 2008; Kultiveret Primitivitet: Eksklusivt Folkeligt (Cultivated Primitivity: Exclusively Democratic), Craft in Dialogue, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2005; New Danish Ceramics, Museum of Art & Design (now Designmuseum Danmark), Copenhagen, 2003.


The exhibition received support from Danmarks Nationalbank’s Foundation of 1968 and the Danish Arts Foundation’s Committee for Crafts and Design Project Funding.

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