| Click image to enlarge |
 |
|
| Kim-Anh Nguyen |
|
|
| photographs by Greg Piper |
|
|
 |
|
Boat Peoples' Horizon 2011
Southern Ice Porcelain paper clay
Wall panel (100 X 50cm) and 12 boats.
6 X 12cm (smallest), 15 X 30cm (largest)
$9000 |
| |
|
|
 |
|
Spinifex Family 2011
Set of 3 green vessels
Porcelain paper clay
15 X 17cm, 16 X 20cm, and 15 X 15cm
$2200 |
| |
|
|
 |
|
Spinifex (blue) 2011
Southern Ice Porcelain paper clay
15 X 19cm
$800
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
Spinifex (blue-tall) 2011
Southern Ice Porcelain paper clay
15 X 21cm
$800
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
Spinifex (purple) 2011
Southern Ice Porcelain paper clay
13 X 17cm
$750
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
Spinifex (grey) 2011
Southern Ice Porcelain paper clay
15 X 18cm
$800
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
Spinifex (white) 2011
Southern Ice Porcelain paper clay
16 X 22cm
Light Included
$850
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| Ben Richardson |
|
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
Instill 1-Cluster 2011
Woodfired Stoneware
26 x 20 x 20cm
Complete; $1,750
element 1; largest torso vase - $500
element 2; medium torso vase - $500
element 3; largest boulder vase - $450
element 4; medium boulder vase - $350
element 5; small boulder vase - $250 |
| |
|
|
 |
|
Instill 2 - Light and Shade 2010
Woodfired Stoneware
26 x 20 x 20cm
Complete; $900
Black Torso vase; $450
Bone Torso vase ;$600 |
| |
|
|
 |
|
Instill 3 - Shadow 2010
Woodfired Stoneware
26 x 20 x 20cm
Complete;$1200
element 1; shale torso vase - $600
element 2; boulder vase - $800 |
| |
|
|
 |
|
Instill 4- Shelter 2010
Woodfired Stoneware
26 x 20 x 20cm
Complete; $1200
element 1; shale torso vase (tall) - $600
element 2; shale torso vase ( medium) - $450
element 3 - small boulder vase - $350 |
| |
|
|
 |
|
Instill 5- Decline 2010
Woodfired Stoneware
26 x 20 x 20cm
Complete; $1100
element 1; small wedge - $500
element 2; medium wedge - $800 |
| |
|
|
 |
|
Flow 2011
woodfired stoneware
$1,500
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| Prue Venables |
|
|
| photographs by Terence Bogue |
|
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
Tamis 1 2011
White with black interior mobile enclosure
Limoges porcelain, hand thrown and cast, pierced
11 x 9 x 9 cm
$1,800
Tamis 2 2011
Black with white interior mobile enclosure
Limoges porcelain, hand thrown and cast, pierced
8 x 7 x 7 cm
$1,800 |
| |
|
|
 |
|
Tamis 3 2011
White with black interior mobile enclosure
Limoges porcelain, hand thrown and cast, pierced
19 x 10 x 10 cm
$2,500
Tamis 4 2011
White with white interior mobile enclosure
Limoges porcelain, hand thrown and cast, pierced
21 x 9 x 9 cm
$2,500
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
Tamis 5 2011
White with black interior mobile enclosure
Limoges porcelain, hand thrown and cast, pierced
14 x 9 x 9 cm
$2,200
Tamis 6 2011
White with white interior mobile enclosure
Limoges porcelain, hand thrown and cast, pierced
7 x 6 x 6 cm
$850
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
Tamis 7 2011
Black with black interior mobile enclosure
Limoges porcelain, hand thrown and cast, pierced
10 x 8 x 8 cm
$1,800
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
Tamis 8 2011
White with white interior mobile enclosure
Limoges porcelain, hand thrown and cast, pierced
15 x 11 x 11cm
$2,200
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| Belinda Winkler |
|
|
| photographs by Peter Whyte |
|
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
Gravity 2011
Installation Porcelain Vessels
Southern Ice Porcelain with glazed interiors and hand polished exteriors, Concrete
210 x 60 x 27 cm
$19, 800 |
| |
|
|
 |
|
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
Gravity #2 2011Pair of Porcelain Vessels
Southern Ice Porcelain with glazed interiors and hand polished exteriors
20 x 10 x 10 cm
$2500 |
| |
|
|
 |
|
Gravity #3 2011
Pair of Bronze Vessels
Cast and Patinaed Bronze (Coates and Wood Fine Art Foundry, Melbourne)
24 x 12 x 12 cm
$2500 |
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Vitrify
Alcorso Ceramic Award 2011 |
Kim-Anh Nguyen - Boats
White (large) First Fleet 1788
Carried convicts from Great Britain to Australia.
Arrived at Botany Bay.
Grey (large) The General Heintzelman 1947
First ship that carried displaced persons
from war torn Europe to settle in Australia.
Reached WA port of Freemantle, then on the
HMAS Kanimbla to Port Melbourne
Blue (large) The Nelly 1950 Transported refugees from Delmenhorst
Displaced Persons' Camp in Germany to
Australia under the Displaced Persons'
Immigration Scheme.
Blue (smallest) My family and I with many others on a tiny 1976 boat leaving Vietnam for Malaysia.
The journey was perilous.
Surrounding us was just the deep dark sea.
We encountered large waves in a storm that could
devour our tiny boat, but somehow we managed
to escape.
After seven days, we sighted land. That was Heaven!
Red MV Tampa (Norwegian Freighter) 2001
Carried rescued Afghans from a distressed
fishing vessel in international waters to enter
Australian waters.
White (medium) HMAS Manoora 2001
Transported refugees from the Tampa to
Nauru as part of Australia's "Pacific Solution"
asylum seeker program.
SIEVs-Suspected Illegal Entry Vessels.
These boats carried asylum seekers.
Black SIEV 4 2001
Involved in the children overboard affairs.
Black SIEV 10 2001
Sank
Grey SIEV 36 2009
Explode
Grey SIEV 221 2010
Shipwrecked on cliffs at Christmas Island
Grey SIEV 221 2010
Shipwrecked on cliffs at Christmas Island.
Blue (small) Boat from Tunisia arriving in Lampedusa, 2011
Italy.
White (small) Another boat at sea somewhere seeking refuge. |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
In the Japanese village of Onda, I once watched a couple of young men making teabowls. As they worked, they chatted to one another, hardly glancing down. A lump of wet clay was transformed into a bowl, removed from the wheel and stacked with others ready for firing in a matter of minutes. They knew precisely what they were doing without giving it a thought.
Broadly speaking, we can distinguish two kinds of knowledge: theoretical and practical. Theoretical knowledge, which lays out basic principles that can be applied in different situations, depends on language and abstract reasoning. It can explain how a car works, for example. But it won't fix your Volkswagen when it blows a gasket. For that, you need good old practical know-how, which, for the purposes of this argument, we will call craft skill.
It goes without saying that a potter (or ceramicist, if you prefer) must have a sound theoretical knowledge of clays and glazes and how each will perform in the heat of the kiln. Yet that, on its own, is not enough. The theory must be internalised so it can be instantly adapted to new situations as they arise. This is where craft skills come to the fore. They are unpredictable, instinctual and take time to be acquired, largely through trial and error. Unlike theoretical knowledge, they cannot be fully explained, as you will discover if you ask a potter to detail how a particular work was made.
The problem, however, is that all this patient mastering of skills seems tedious and old- fashioned to a generation accustomed to getting instant results at the click of a mouse, without effort or the taking of time. The joy of doing has lost out to the efficiency of getting things done. Craft skills hardly figure any more.
Most of the plates and bowls we use daily in the kitchen, for example, have been designed and made by computers. As a result, they are inexpensive, robust and flawless. If we break one, we can simply replace it with an identical copy.
Sadly, though, they are completely lifeless. They lack heart: that indefinable quality that only the mastery of craft skills can impart. This is what we respond to in something hand-made, even when produced in large numbers like the Onda teabowls. Because it cannot be defined, many in this rigidly rational age dismiss it as sentimental and irrelevant. Nonetheless, we all respond to it when we take the time to look, and it makes our lives richer by giving us pleasure.
Takeshi Yasuda, a Japanese-born potter living in England, explains it well when he says that his vessels are only half-made by him and cannot be complete until people possess them, live with them and creatively engage with them.
Despite their individual differences, the works in this exhibition, by Kim-Anh Nguyen, Ben Richardson, Prue Venables and Belinda Winkler, invite exactly this kind of creative engagement. They are not inert objects: they have heart.
Having chosen these four artists from a large number of entrants, the judges invited each to make a group of pieces especially for the exhibition, one of which will be awarded the inaugural $10,000 Vitrify Alcorso Ceramic Award. An important aim of the award is to take us beyond the rational materialism of the new-media age and to spark renewed enthusiasm for craft skills. Given Tasmania's hard-won reputation for high quality craftwork and design, it is fitting that this state should now be hosting a major national ceramics prize, and especially fitting that it should bear the Alcorso name.
Peter Timms, Hobart 2011 |
| |
|
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
