Guild Gallery is pleased to present Immortality, the gallery’s second solo exhibition of vessels and plates by Akiko Hirai, the London-based ceramic artist renowned for her raw physicality of form and weathered, tactile surfaces.

Immortality features new works across three interrelated series: Moon Jars, Cocoon Forms, and Cracked Plates. Each series is shaped by the tension between Hirai’s hand and the will of the clay. Emerging from the unpredictable alchemy of the kiln, these works collectively explore themes of fragility and the material passage of time. The exhibition’s title is taken from Milan Kundera’s 1991 novel of the same name, which explores legacy as a continuous act. “Immortality means eternal trial,” Kundera writes. In this light, Hirai’s ceramics are not rooted in precision, but in metamorphosis.

Born in Japan in 1970, Hirai moved to London in 1999 to study ceramics at the University of Westminster and Central Saint Martins. Her practice bridges Japanese and British studio pottery traditions while resisting the strict formalism of either. In Immortality, she continues her technique of incorporating ash from region-specific woods. Acting as a trace of memory and place, the ash emphasizes imperfection when combined with glazes and the kiln’s fire.

Moon Jars are often coated in a pale blue-green running glaze, snowy and crackled layers nearly obscuring the vessel beneath. By contrast, Cocoon Forms shift to the materiality of sediment. These new works are matte and muted in tone: dry, ash-brown, and powdery, with moth-like adornments that suggest ghostly transformation. They feel still and ancient, like the layered earth of stratovolcanoes in Pompeii and the buried strata of crumbling Italian villages. Disc-like and sharp-edged, Cracked Plates resemble ceramic shrapnel or archaeological fragments, embracing the structural clarity of brokenness. Across each of these three bodies of works — Moon, Cocoon, Cracked — Hirai reveals the expressive nature of erosion. Taken together, there is a palpable presence of pastness in these new pieces.