Official opening by Damon Moon, Creative Director, Ceramics Studio, Jam Factory, Adelaide 6.30pm Thursday 22 March.
A survey exhibition celebrating 91 years of one of Australia’s most eminent potters featuring items made between 1990 and 2016.
Milton Moon was born in Melbourne in 1926. In 1949, after service in World War II, he settled in Brisbane where he worked in radio and television. He trained for a while as a painter but also pursued his interest in pottery, which arose through his friendship with potter Harry Memmott. In 1959 he set up a studio at Tarragindi, Brisbane. Milton was mostly self-taught but learnt wheel-throwing from Mervyn Feeney. As a tutor at the Department of Technical Education in Queensland (1962-1969) and the School of Art in Adelaide (1969-1975) he passed on these skills to many students. After retiring from teaching, he started potting full-time at Summertown in the Adelaide Hills.
Milton was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1984 for ‘service to the ceramic art, particularly pottery’. He has studied in many countries, as a recipient of a foundation Winston Churchill Fellowship and also as a Myer Foundation Geijutsu Fellow. His work is in all major Australian Collections.
Milton Moon is represented by Aptos Cruz Galleries, Stirling, South Australia
Over the years Canberra Potters has collected a number of pottery items, some from well-known artists and others not so well-known. Some pieces have been made by artists whilst tutoring workshops and masterclasses at Canberra Potters, others have been kindly donated. With out artist-in-residence program now well established, the collection continues to grow with artistic works from the residents.
Most of the time these pieces are only seen by Canberra Potters members and students but occasionally, as now, we are able to exhibit some selected works from the collection.
An exhibition of work by noted ceramicist Hiroe Swen celebrating 61 years as a potter.
Hiroe Swen was born in Kyoto, Japan in 1934 and worked there as a potter after completing a five year apprenticeship with master potter Heihachiro Hayashi in 1962. In 1968 she married the artist/designer Cornel Swen and moved to Sydney. Two years later the couple moved to ‘Bimbimbi’, near Queanbeyan, NSW, setting up the Pastoral Gallery there in 1973. Swen became an Australian in 1974 and taught at the ANU School of Art Ceramics Workshop from 1980 until her retirement in 2005. Known as one of Australia’s foremost ceramic artists, Swen specializes in one-off coil-built vessel forms that explore the human condition.
In 2016 Swen was awarded The Order of the Rising Sun, God and Silver Rays, by the Government of Japan, acknowledgement of her contribution to the promotion of Japanese culture and mutual understanding between Japan and Australia, specifically for pioneering as a Japanese female ceramist, as an artist beyond cultural boundaries and as an educator.
Her works are held in several major collections in Australia and overseas, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Federal Parliament House, the High Court of Australia, Australian Embassies and High Commissions (Washington DC, Tokyo, New Delhi), the Australian National University and the Oakland Museum.
In 2018, at 84 years of age, Swen is still working, still creating, still moving her work forward. This exhibition of new work celebrates her 50 years in Australia and 61 years as a potter.
Image: Yumiko Starke
This exhibition is supported by the Embassy of Japan in Australia.
Graduating Year 12 students from Dickson College showcase their creative talents.
The works on display explore topics such as society and culture, visual narrative, printmaking and ceramic techniques as well as costuming, up-cycled fashion and digital and traditional darkroom photography. Year 12 Fashion and Art student Lucy Francis says that the exhibition is ‘…a way to share the work we have created to a large audience, to share people’s expressions and skills in a tangible way’.
The exhibition will be opened on Thursday 8 November at 6pm by graduating students Lucy Francis and Caitlin Waddell. The event will feature a fashion parade, dance and musical performances and is for Dickson College students, families and invited guests.
An exhibition of ceramic work by Vanuatu potter Keneki (Ken) Naki incorporating traditional kastom sand-drawing designs, who has been mentored by Australian Master Potter Alistair Whyte, as part of the Pottery Development Project in South West Bay Malekula Island. Their relationship came out of Whyte’s work to resurrect the long-gone craft of pottery in Vanuatu. This Pottery Development Project is a cottage industry established with the goal of creating employment and village income, where currently is only coconuts and kava. The purchase of pottery from this ‘cash and carry’ show will go toward supporting this project.
Canberra Potters is proud to present its annual Members’ Exhibition featuring some of the best work created by its members during the last twelve months.
The exhibition presents the inexhaustible breadth of ceramic arts through works using combinations of different clays, making, decorating and firing techniques to create works that are unique in form, texture and colour.
Members compete for the premier award of the exhibition, the Doug Alexander Award, and thanks to our generous exhibition partners, a range of other awards will also be presented.
We are very pleased to announce that Mr Gordon Ramsay MLA, Minister for the Arts & Community Events will be our guest of honour and open this year’s exhibition.
This exhibition will feature over 100 ceramic heads! The exhibition is work by Canberra artists Racheal Bruhn and Amanda Bruhn alongside Sydney artist Brendan Smith.
To be opened by David Whitbread on Thursday 13 September at 6pm.
The collection of work shows the primary concerns of each artist and their practice. It highlights their different approaches to making work and building small conversations on life, community, society and the natural world that we inhabit.
Racheal Bruhn – Light– includes a collection of 1,000 small watercolour paintings based on the changing colour and light that endure over a repetitive sequence. Racheal works with ideas of small precious shapes usually overlooked.
Amanda Bruhn – Fire– features white raku clay faces reproduced through moulding and remoulding, positive and negative forms in concert with the fluidity of the finishing fire producing multiple pieces.
Brendan Smith – Flowers– considers our relationship to gardens and gardening. Brendan’s work plays with the poetics of storytelling as he builds visual relationships that graft shapes and colours to used materials to form new and ever-changing possibilities.
Opening event 6pm Thursday 16 August with Dr Julie Bartholomew, Head of Ceramics, ANU School of Art & Design.
This year’s Emerging Artist Support Scheme (EASS) exhibition features the ceramic work of Mahala Hill. Mahala was selected by Canberra Potters from 2017 ANU School of Art and Design ceramics graduates for this exhibition opportunity.
Mahala is a contemporary ceramic artist, striving to push both the limits and the pre-conceived notions of her medium. Her practice is discursive in nature: material exploration leads to ideas and extends conceptual intent, bringing to the foreground further questions or conundrums for exploration. She has been exploring curiosity, wonder, beauty, death, the apocalypse and how, by using these motifs, she can raise awareness of pressing environmental issues.
Over the past three years she has focused on the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef and the survival of Australian endangered species. Her practice focuses around the ‘burn out’. A ‘burn out’ is the remnant shell-like form that emerges from inside a layer of liquid clay after the combustible organic plant material has incinerated. The residual matter is a ghostly, shell-like phantom form or ‘burn out’ spectre, simultaneously evoking traces of a life and loss.
Features the work of three of this year’s Canberra Potters artists-in-residence: Chris Dunn (from New Zealand), Peter Scherzer (from Hawaii, USA) and Srinia Chowdhury (from India, our current visiting artist).
Clay Intersections presents the work of eight contemporary makers who take a range of innovative approaches to making and working with clay, exploring the different intersections of its sculptural and functional qualities. First shown at the ADC Gallery, Sydney from 28 July – 21 September 2016, this is an exhibition toured by Australian Design Centre, Sydney.
Highlighting the work of Bridget Bodenham, Cone 11’s Colin Hopkins and Ilona Topolcsanyi, Helen Earl, Tania Rollond, Natalie Rosin, Ulrica Trulssonand Kenji Uranishi, the artists in Clay Intersectionsdraw their inspiration from the built or natural environment and how they interact with it – whether in contemplation or in a practical sense – enhancing the way we live.
While some have been discovering the versatility of clay, setting new trends and engaging new audiences, others have set out to the learn age-old practices of wheel forming, casting and hand building, spending countless hours developing techniques and mastering skills.
Together, these eight artists are part of a new generation of craftspeople and designer-makers who have emerged alongside new and non-traditional marketplaces outside the gallery and retail environment.
Bridget Bodenham
Bridget defines herself as a potter because she is so prolific in her home based studio near Daylesford in Victoria. While her work is functional, its use is not always prescriptive; it is sculptural, original and continually evolving. Since graduating from art school ten years ago, Bridget has successfully supported herself from her practice and usually sells directly to customers via designer markets such as Finders Keepers or online building an enormous customer base and following on social media.
She was at the vanguard of resurgent interest in handmade ceramics and a source of inspiration to many new practitioners. Fostering relationships with her customer base and collectors of her work is part and parcel of her creative process.
Image: Five peice set, 2016. Photo credit: Vincent Buret
Cone 11
Colin Hopkins and Ilona Topocsanyi established their studio practice and business in 2008 at the historic Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne.
While they each have their individual practices and separate customer bases, their creative processes are very collaborative both inside and outside the studio.
Colin describes his work as “being somewhere between pottery and modernist industrial design” and comes from a desire to make large wheel formed objects. This requires incredible skill, not only to such large pieces in porcelain and fine white stoneware, but then to manage through the drying and firing stages. Having a background as an architect underlies his interest in lighting and how it affects space and being a jazz musician influences the rhythm of his creative process.
Ilona has developed her creative practice through collaborating with chefs around Australia. As the demand for bespoke tableware has increased alongside demand for culinary distinction, Ilona has turned her creative considerations to how tableware frames and holds food. Some of the restaurants she has created work for include Josh Lopez – GOMA, Brisbane QLD, Ben Williamson – Gerad’s Bistro, Brisbane QLD, Dan Hunter -Brae, Birrugurra VIC, Federico Zanellato -LuMi, Sydney NSW, and many others.
There is a beautiful intersection of nature and design in Helen’s work. She explores the interface between form and function, nature and object and often incorporates found objects, usually nature’s flotsam, into her work. Finely crafted and visually engaging, her work invites use but offers no real function. It provokes thought and reflection about how we interact with both the natural and object-laden world. Helen works from a home based studio in Sydney and much of her exploration of ideas for work comes from walking and gathering found objects in her environment.
Drawing and painting are fundamental aspects of Tania’s art practice that intersect poetically and rhythmically with her sculptural ceramic forms. Sometimes Tania’s forms are recognisable but more often they are vaguely familiar. The interplay of colour, form and line in her work is contemplative and used to reinterpret space and objects in a way that evokes a sense of mystery, ambiguity and possibility. Her work requires the viewer to create meaning, to find a way in through their own reflections.
Tania says of her work “I’m interested in ‘things’, un-nameable objects or ambiguous images that lie outside the mediation of language and culture. They offer a direct experience where meaning is open, and create a momentary pause in this fast-paced world of visual overload.”
Image: Uncertain object 24, 2016. Image courtesy of the artist.
Natalie Rosin
At the intersection of clay and architecture is Natalie Rosin. As an emerging artist and architecture graduate, her work freely explores form and space through clay. Unlike the traditional model making materials of balsa wood and cardboard, Natalie experiments with clay to explore design possibilities bringing an element of surprise to her work. Clay can sag, shrink and warp unexpectedly. Her pieces are a combination of reworking iconic buildings and experimenting with her own designs and invite the viewer to think about space and architecture in a sculptural and playful way.
Image: Stilted #4, 2016. Image courtesy of the artist.
Ulrica Trulsson
Functional, sculptural, beautifully crafted with a pared back aesthetic, Ulrica’s work is refined and minimal. Her focused attention to detail in the design and crafting is evident when you lift a lid, hold a cup or survey the fine detail in the surface textures or the variations of colour. There are echo’s of the natural world, the swirls of sedimentary rocks evoked by the blending of clays and application of subtle glazes.
Based in Adelaide at the Jam Factory, Ulrica has enjoyed the collegiate support of this organisation and mentoring from highly respected ceramic artists Kirsten Coelho and Prue Venables.
Image: Fluctuation 02, 2016. Photo credit: Michal Kluvanek
Kenji Uranishi
The architecture of the natural world as well as the built environment is simultaneously transmitted through Kenji Uranishi’s work. Installations of his work are wonderous cross sections of imaginary cityscapes or enlarged details of organic forms. The fine, translucent quality of porcelain catches and reflects light, emitting an ethereal quality.
Kenji’s choice of porcelain as a material is relatively recent. Moving to Australia in 2012 allowed his art practice to take on a new direction and respond to new influences and materials rather than the dark and coarser stoneware clays he was familiar with in Japan. He began using a combination of handbuilding techniques with fine porcelain slabs and slip casting. His attention to detail and skillful creation of complex forms are breathtaking.
Image: Momentary (installation view), 2015. Photo credit: Carl Warner
Cath Fogarty – curator
Cath has a broad cross section of experience in the arts and cultural sector as a potter, teacher, arts administrator, gallery educator, curator and small business owner. Her resume reads like a patchwork quilt of arts related activity stitched together by her ceramic practice. From teaching pottery in remote Aboriginal communities to being an educator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, from working in the regional arts network with Outback Arts and Arts Northern Rivers to Museums and Galleries NSW and back into teaching ceramics at TAFE.
In 2013 Catherine established Chinaclay, a store and gallery specialising in handmade Australian ceramics in Sydney’s eastern suburbs where she built up a strong following and reputation.
She has recently moved to the Mid North Coast and joined Coffs Harbour City Council’s cultural services team and is working with the Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery and Museum.
Photo creit: Vincent Buret.
Clay Intersections is an ADC On Tour national touring exhibition, first presented by Australian Design Centre in 2016.
Australian Design Centre is supported by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments. Australian Design Centre is assisted by the New South Wales Government through Create NSW, and the Australian government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
