Breaking the Mould

I’ve just spent a lazy but inspiring saturday afternoon curled up with my brand new book that I’ve been wanting to get my hands on for ages - Breaking the Mould: New approaches to Ceramics. It was worth the wait. It profiles over 60 contemporary ceramic artists, includes essays by Natasha Daintry, Rob Barnard and Clare Twomey, and has a stupendously good web directory in the back of most of the artists included. A damn good resource. Hours of fun. For all the family.

Barnaby Barford "Shit! Now I'm going to be really late" 2006

Some of my old favourites are in there including the very amusing and witty tableaus by Barnaby Barford (above), the evocative and melancholy figures of Irish artist Claire Curneen, Justin Novak’s disturbing and slightly gruesome disfigurines, Clare Twomey’s site-specific installations and Marek Cecula’s porcelain carpet and super great Burned Again series (below)

Marek Cecula, In Dust Real: Burned Again, Industrial Porcelain/Woodfired 2005

And some great work I hadn’t come across before – check these out: Isobel Egan, Damian O’Sullivan, Wai-Lian Scannell/SOOP and Kjell Rylander .

Damian O'Sullivan Delft Eye Patch

Lots of food for thought. I’m lost to ceramic la-la land for the rest of the day I think.

(You can see a great preview of the book here))

More Little Uns

Some new Little Un's, fresh out of the kiln!

Bits and Bobs

A few things to check out:

The work of Dutch artist Anton Riejnders (above) which I have just recently re-discovered. And I still like it. A lot.

Melbourne-based ceramicist Vipoo Srivilasa's recent adventures in China for the opening of A Secret History of Blue and White (Vipoo's work pictured below).

And some good things being done by Paul in Ireland.

Curio-ser and Curio-ser

Last week Kamenendo, bum crane and I headed off on one of our little missions to see Julie Shepherd’s solo show out at Redlands Gallery. Julie must be one of the most prolific and patient potters I know. The gallery was brimful of her intricate and delicate pierced pieces, from teeny tiny sculptures through to larger (but no less delicate) forms. It was really quite mind blowing trying to comprehend the amount of work that had gone into the show!

And as if that wasn't enough, I peeked into the other gallery to discover CURIO, one of the most engaging jewellery exhibitions I have seen in a while. It was curated by Kellee Uhr and included the work of Zoe Jay Veness, Anna Varendorff, Bibi Locke, Eleisha Nylund, Emily Bullock, Liana Kabel and Madelaine Brown.

I have a strange relationship with jewellery. I very rarely wear it and yet I am so drawn to it and have a deep appreciation for it. I admire and am fascinated by the ingenious and multi-faceted approaches that jewellers use in their craft, the diversity of materials they use and the clever ways in which they use them. From Liana Kabel’s rubber necklaces (below) displayed very strikingly across a wall, through to Zoe Jay Veness’ incredible intricate paper ‘brooches’ (above left), this show really had it all.

Emily Bullocks Lucky Claw brooches (below), made from the wings of budgies and rosellas, were beautiful, horrifying, amusing and disturbing all at the same time!

I also really enjoyed Madelaine Brown’s Frivolite series (below), rings cast in silver and gold from handmade lace. Love a good bit of tatting I do!!

So all in all a very inspiring mission, topped off with our usual pillaging of the local bakeries and op shops.

stubby

This is all that remains of my trusty old underglaze pencil that has served me faithfully for over a year. I use it to sign the base of all my work (except the really super duper translucent pieces, which would crumble into shards if I pressed on them with this clunky old pencil).

A few days ago I decided stubby's days were numbered and it was time to get a new long shiny sexy underglaze pencil. I was so excited at the prospect of being able to sign my name once more without feeling totally uncoordinated - have you ever tried to sign your name with a 2cm long pencil...its a bit trickyI tell ya!

So I had a whole kiln load of work lined up (in nice straight rows of course) ready to be signed. But when I went to sharpen the shiny new model, it had totally disappeared. I turned my house, my studio and my car upside down in search of that damn pencil but to no avail. Talk about annoyed. I swore a lot.

Once again i had to make do with little stubby here. So if you happen to be looking at some of my work and think my signature looks like it was done by a 3 year old, it is more than likely going to have been scrawled very uncoordinately using the pathetic remains of dear old stubby here. The last of a long line.

Of course, after I had signed all the work I found the new one. In a really obvious place.

Fancy Pants

Well I’m feeling like a bit of a fancy pants today after finally seeing the latest edition of Ceramics Art & Perception with 5 glossy pages all about ME!! Susan Ostling did such a wonderful job writing this article and a big big thank you to her for taking the time to do it, and especially for coming to my studio and being polite enough to sit on my dirty dust covered studio couch without even raising an eyebrow! Apart from being a great writer Susan is a curator and lecturer in Fine Arts at Griffith University. She also has the best damn hair in the business!!

This edition of the mag (#69) also has an article written by Diana Hare about our exhibition North/South Discourse at the NCECA Conference last year, which was organised by the supremely super Carole Epp. Geez, double whammy!

Swapsies

Love a good swap I do! Its a really lovely way of collecting work from friends, peers, and on the odd occasion absolute strangers! And the last few weeks have seen a few pearlers come my way! From Melbourne to Canada and beyond! Here's my recent booty.

Ceramic tiles by Canadian ceramicist Jasna Sokolovic (i'd been eyeing these off for some time)

And these beautiful hand embroidered blue birds by the very clever and talented Reb at Purely Decorative

Swaptastic.

Making amidst the mayhem

Well its been a little quiet on the blog/work front lately…visiting family…house reno’s….perfect opportunities for procrastination! But in between all the mayhem I have managed to get some work out for the upcoming Art Sydney 07. Object Gallery will be representing my work there this year in October, which is very nice of them indeed! Among other things, I’ve made a limited edition series of these porcelain wall pieces with small spoon indentations in them (5cm x 12 cm)

I’m in the process of making a whole row of them to run along a wall in my kitchen. I rarely have time to make things for myself, but I’m determined to finish these ones, if it’s the last thing I do!! They’ll all be decorated with recipes written in my mum and my grandmothers handwriting, and I might just have to add my sisters and my own to that collection too. Saves getting out the recipe books!

Whenever I make work, I photograph it a lot - from all different angles, in different groupings, lines, rows, light. I find it gives me an added perspective on the work, which you sometimes miss when you’ve been working on something up close for a while. Sometimes it leads to new ideas, new thoughts on how to present work, new ideas on where to take it next.

And just in case you haven't noticed, I also have a bit of a compulsive need to arrange things in lines and rows and grids…aaaah....something sooooo satisfying about it!

I’ve also made a small edition of these bird wall vases (below). They’re part of a much bigger wall piece that I’m working on, but I just snuck a few out for those nice folk at Object!

More from South Australia

I may have to declare this month South Australian Ceramics month on my blog. It seems like every time I turn around another one is popping up doing something or other worth writing about! This time it’s the eminent Gerry Wedd, who you might notice is now included in my list of ceramic blog links. It seems Gerry wears a lot of hats – ceramicist, surfing champ, cartoonist, jeweller, clothing designer for mambo etc etc – but everything he does is infused with a great sense of humour and wit and a good dose of social commentary. I was lucky enough to catch his show WILLOW at Craft ACT a while back, and loved it. In his recent work he has taken the classic blue and white patterns used in ceramics and created his own very unique and very Australian interpretation! Lots of Australian icons and imagery - the ceramic thongs (that’s a shoe, not underwear, for you non-Australians!) being one of my fav’s! So make sure you check out his new blog - Weddwood!

And seeing as its aaaaalll about South Australia, here's a couple of pics of another top shelf South Australian ceramicist - Marie Littlewood's beauuuuuutiful beakers. Love em!

ok. that's quite enough blogging for one week. Oh bad little procrastinator I am. Must work in studio... must work in studio... must work in studio... must work...

Bricks and mortar

I really should be thinking about other things right now, but I’ve been getting distracted by this Ipswich House project, and reading up on some background. The city of Ipswich has a very rich ceramic history and even though its only a small city it supported a lot of potteries that made bricks, pipes and lots of domestic wares in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. None of the potteries remain today but there’s some great examples of their work in the collection of the city gallery. This selection of old local bricks (above) from the regions potteries really took my fancy. Love a good brick I do! My nana used to heat bricks up in her wood stove and wrap them up in a towel and put them in the end of our beds in the chilly Toowoomba winters when I was a kid!

This picture (above) took my fancy too. It’s a garden edge tile made by Thomas Shepherd in the late 1800s and impressed with his hand print.

A lot of the domestic pots were very simple and robust looking bottles and jugs and plates, although I must say some of them were a little….hmmm….shall we say decorative....

The catalogue describes them as being "occassionally eccentric" in their decorative embellishments! Mostly though they were very simple utilitarian pots that were used for very everyday things.

So me thinks that the gallery’s collection and all the historical records of the Ipswich Potteries are going to provide me with much fodder for this project. That old house must have seen some fine pots in its day. If only the walls could speak…

(All the above images were taken by Brian Hand and are from the Ipswich Art Gallery's publication Ipswich Potteries 1873-1926, with text by Geoff Ford)

A house of ones own

This is my house. Kind of. I don’t live in it. I don’t own it. But I have been assigned to it! I had a much anticipated meeting with the Ipswich Art Gallery today, who are commissioning me to make a work about this heritage house for their collection. Oh yeaaaah, right up my alley! I can feel a session with white gloves in a dark dusty library coming on and my fingers are twitching already!

It was built in 1865 and used to be owned by an Australian poet called Thomas Shapcott, who wrote some very beautiful poems in it and about it. This is one of them….the layout of the text mirrors a cedar staircase inside the house.

Hmmm. Happy me. Projects like this make my day. As do the op shops at Ipswich. Bargains galore.

Melbourne delivers

Last week, despite the rather chilly and rainy weather and my resulting big bad head cold, I still managed to pound the streets of Melbourne, going from shop to shop, gallery to gallery, ooohing and aaahing at all the cool STUFF! The Chapel St Bazaar offered up this super find, an Italian ceramic/metal coffee pot....

...and Craft Victoria was full of so many beautiful ceramic pieces I kind of just spun around in circles not knowing what to pick up first. I finally settled on four of these beautiful bowls (below)by South Australian ceramicist Charmian Header, and I have eaten almost every meal out of them since I got home. They are so warm, and just a little wonky. I particularly love the white one, the subtle difference between the white slip pattern and the white glaze, the way it breaks to brown around the rim...Gee, those South Australians really know how to make nice pots!

The list gets longer...

I got an email from Emily Murphy the other day, who is a potter from Chicago. She has been a busy little bee lately and has put together a rather enormous list of ceramics/pottery blogs. It's a great list - lots of technical stuff, lots of peaks into peoples studios and lots of great and diverse work. On ya Emily! (Emily's soda-fired work above)

Home again home again jiggety jig

Home again! A bit of this...

and this...

and this...

is just what I needed! Back in the studio today to start playing around with a few new ideas that are slowly but surely worming their way up from the dark recesses of my grey matter. Hopefully my table won't be this clean and orderly for very long...

In search of the Creative Spark

I recently received a Creative Sparks grant from the Brisbane City Council to develop some new work (thanks Campbell!), but given my little uninspired malaise of late, I’ve decided to take a month or so off before I jump into this. So we’re going to head up to Far North QLD for a bit of adventure, hiking through marine parks and lazing around on warm tropical beaches. Oh the sacrifices one must make for arts sake! Then its down to Melbourne to visit old friends and new babies, to soak up the atmosphere, roam the galleries, freeze my ass off and (hopefully) get re-inspired! Sometimes walking away from it all is the best thing you can do! Cheerio then! Back in a few weeks!

Kirsten Coelho

There’s some damn fine ceramics being made in Australia, and I thought I might start showing you some if it, starting with one of my all time favourites Kirsten Coelho. She’s right up there near the top of my Favourite Australian Ceramicists list. This might sound weird (and I hope she doesn’t mind me saying this!) but whenever I see her work I want to hold it to my cheek! It’s the surfaces…those cool, beautiful glazes...simple, refined, contemporary and just downright beautiful! She's one clever lady. I've been having huge urges lately to get back on the wheel and throw me some pots (its been a while!), and work like this (and this) inspires me.

If you’re interested in finding out a bit more about Australian ceramics here’s a couple of links that might get you started - Craft Culture, Journal of Australian Ceramics, Australian Ceramics Blog (via Shannon).