About & CV

Kristina Riska (b. 1960)

Kristina Riska is one of the most significant contemporary ceramic artists in the Nordic countries and a long-standing member of the Arabia Art Department Society. Since the 1980s she has explored, challenged and redefined the traditional premises of ceramic sculpture. Her unconventional, large-scale works draw their inspiration from nature and from the qualities of light and shadow, and they carry the trace of the artist's physically demanding way of working.

Riska begins by sketching her works on paper, but the final form emerges spontaneously as the work proceeds. The process is a journey into the unknown: every unplanned, instinctive movement in the clay creates a non-physical “inner” space within the work. Riska describes this space as a repository of silence, calm and concentration.

The works are technically exceptional: alongside their impressive scale runs an equal fragility, and the forms seem to defy gravity and the limits of the ceramic process. Her mastery is also evident in the beauty of the glazes, given the constraints of firing works of such monumental size.

In 1986 Riska took part in an exhibition at Galleria Bronda, which can be considered her first breakthrough. It presented a series of vessels so large that hanging them proved difficult. The State Art Collection acquired two works from the exhibition, marking the beginning of a career recognised both in Finland and abroad. In 1991 Riska held a joint exhibition with architect Kimmo Friman at Galleria Kluuvi. By then she had abandoned the traditional rules of vessel making — her curved, overlapping and porous forms were awarded, among others, the state Finland Prize in 1995 and a silver medal at the International Ceramics Competition in Mino, Japan, in 2002.

Text and works: the artist and Hostler Burrows.