Variations Exhibition Opening

Opening 6pm Thursday 8 June by Susan Templeman (Member for Macquarie) and Special Envoy for the Arts.

About the Exhibition:

From December 2019 to January 2023 the country, indeed the world, has been on a wild ride foreseen by no one.

My time was totally taken up with the firestorms that raged down the east coast of Australia in what became known as Black Summer. Moving aside my pottery work and giving all my energy to my local fire brigade for some months was in some way a welcome break from my routine work. When the rain came to my part of the world in Katoomba, the Blue Mountains, it was a great relief and my thoughts started to turn back to the workshop. Then astoundingly along came Covid.

Unbelievingly looking at images of empty streets in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and on and on.  It was an opportunity to completely return unhindered to the workshop without any distractions and that year produced the beginnings of the variations that this exhibition represents.

I have always made shapes I was brought up with. I have always made small intimate pots but with time to practice a new skill and without deadlines, much to my surprise, some large pots started to appear.  It is a skill that I am still developing. Different skills and different judgements needed that I hadn’t considered as skills and judgements for many years. The bigger pots still adhere to my joy in simple shapes. I find that the line of the pot is set right at the base and yet I often wonder where the pot is going until we get there in the last two or three coils. Also some new flat ware plates have come along rather than the usual charger type plates of my heritage.

Variations is a gentle word and the variations in my work are also gentle and not abrupt. As ever my aim is to present an exhibition of beauty rather than a cerebral exercise using ceramics as a vehicle to prove one’s intelligence and academic rigor. I am happy to leave that to others. 

- Susie McMeekin