Opened 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

Image: Susie McMeekin, 2022. Photograph by Greg Piper. 

Opening and Awards Presentation: 2pm Saturday 13 May 2022

Canberra Potters’ annual Student | Teacher Exhibition is an opportunity to celebrate the skills and creativity of the many students who attend classes at Canberra Potters. Designed to give students a welcoming environment to publicly display their work, participation is open to all students – adults and children – who have attended classes at Canberra Potters in the previous 12 months. Participation is free of charge.

Classes offered at Canberra Potters range from those suitable for beginners to experienced potters, and cover techniques such as handbuilding, wheelthrowing, decorating techniques, glazing and firing processes. Our strong, experienced team of teachers is invaluable in guiding students in their exploration of clay and creativity and we are fortunate to have a broad spectrum of teachers who are all excellent potters in their own right. Teachers’ work is exhibited alongside the student work.  

Top Image: Penny Mims, 2022 People’s Choice Award Winner

Front tile image: Kate Gubesch, 2022

Opening: 6pm Thursday 23 April 2023 by Rod Bamford, Head of ANU School of Art & Design Ceramics Workshop.

The annual Emerging Artist Support Scheme (EASS) exhibition selects work from ANU School of Art & Design ceramics graduates from the previous graduating year. Threads of Being: EASS 2023 will present a group exhibition featuring the work of four 2022 graduates: Alicia Cox, Molly Desmond, Adeline Jeffery and Nathan Nhan.

Exploring themes of grief, gender and symbolism, identity and community, and materiality, the four artists represented create contrastive works which together present a strong exhibition showcasing some of the many forms, techniques and finishes that can be achieved with clay.

About the Artists:

Alicia Cox’s ceramic work explores the gendered symbolism of domestic functional objects and her connection to them. She creates familiar objects that are subverted via their affordances, in order to recode them from function to dysfunction. These objects silently protest against their intended purpose and therefore our preconceived notions of how they, and women, should behave.

Molly Desmond is an emerging artist working across ceramics and painting. Living and working on Ngambri and Ngunnawal Country, Desmond draws influence from the landscape and urban environments of the ‘Bush Capital.’ Completed during a residency at the Canberra Potter’s Society over the summer of 2023, this series of ceramic sculptures is led by material investigations to interrogate the symbiotic relationship of surface, form and colour through clay and glaze. Generated from a resource of memories and sensations, the objects explore the formal qualities of surface to contemplate the transient nature of perception. Desmond is currently undertaking an honours year in Visual Arts at the Australian National University School of Art and Design.

Adeline Jeffery’s work investigates the connection between group sharing and healing in response to traumatic life experiences. Those Left Behind draws on the personal recordings of a select group of family and friends that have dealt with the loss of a loved one to terminal illness and offers a space in which to reflect and find solace.

Nathan Nhan is a ceramicist whose practice uses experimental making and the ceramic process as a tool to create, investigate and manifest identities within his work. Responding to the inherent materiality and cultural significance of ceramics, Nhan reflects upon concepts of place, community, and identity from an Asian-Australian perspective. He often employs traditional vessels as a foundation, transforming historical forms into contemporary vehicles that play with the medium’s enduring epic narrative of both Eastern and Western perspectives imbued with personal stories and social commentary.

Tile image (front): Alicia Cox, Equal Share, glazed slip-cast porcelain.

Top image: Adeline Jeffery, Those Left Behind, slip cast porcelain.

Australia’s premier satirical art prize, the Bald Archy Prize, is BACK! Celebrating the lighter side of art and the larrikin Australian spirit, we are looking forward to a host of portraits that will make you think, make you talk and most of all make you laugh.

Created in 1994 as a spoof of that more serious competition, the Bald Archy Prize provides artists of all styles and standards with a genuine opportunity to create portrait paintings of humour, dark satire, light comedy or caricature. Known internationally as the only art competition in the world to be judged by a sulphur-crested cockatoo named Maude, the satirical side of this event encapsulates the irreverent, larrikin Australian spirit in a way that appeals to people from all walks of life.

After the passing of Peter Batey in 2019, the administration of the Bald Archy Prize was handed over to the Museum of the Riverina, Wagga Wagga. Returning for its 27th year in 2023, the Bald Archy Prize is again calling for artworks to carry on the fine tradition of having a laugh while enjoying art.

History

Judged by Professor Maude Cockatoo, the world’s premier avian art critic, the Bald Archy prize gives a genuine opportunity to artists of all styles and standards to create portrait paintings of humour, dark satire, light comedy or caricature. In its’ first year the prize struck a chord with the public and a nerve with the arts establishment.

“It was meant to amuse – apparently a problem with people who believe audible laughter shouldn’t be permitted in an art gallery, let alone unsolicited conversation with a complete stranger”
- Peter Batey OAM, 2015

While the Coolac Festival of Fun was retired after 12 years, due to public demand the Bald Archy Prize lives on. It is now internationally known and has been exhibited across Australia. Winning subjects have included Kerry Packer, Shane Warne, John Howard, Pauline Hanson and myriad other Australian icons.

The Judging

The Bald Archy Prize is currently the only art competition in the world judged by a sulphur crested cockatoo.

With an online PhD from the Marilyn Munro University of Little Rock, Professor Maude Cockatoo is the most qualified art critic, avian or otherwise, in Australia (according to Maude). As Coolac’s Visual Arts Laureate, Maude has been the sole judge of the Bald Archy Prize from its inception at the 1994 Coolac Festival of Fun.

Maude’s number one rule for a prize-winner is that it must be funny. Her idea of humour, according to a 2015 interview includes, “wit, slapstick, satire, vulgarity, farce, black comedy, irreverence and everything else that falls between high and low comedy”. On the other hand, Maude loathes ‘hate portraiture’, or ‘soap box art’ as she calls it.

“It takes 11 galahs to judge the Archibald but only one cockatoo to judge the Bald Archy,”
- Peter Batey OAM, 2016 

Announcement of Winner

The winner of the 2023 Bald Archy Prize will be announced at 11am on Tuesday 21 March 2023 at the IBIS Barangaroo in Sydney. All welcome. For the latest information head to the Bald Archy website.

 

The Christmas Fair has a dedicated following of people who know that they’ll be able to complete their Christmas gift shopping in one place. If you haven’t yet discovered Canberra Potters, grab your present list and head on over to Watson; unlike the busy shopping centres, there’s plenty of free parking.