Gleanings from USA and Australia that may interest…

 Bernard Leach: Archival footage shot in 1952 by John Anderson, now with the addition of a recording of Leach speaking and discovered separately as a ¼ inch audio tape reel and found in 2010 in a box of films donated to the Leach Pottery by the widow of John Anderson …. recently restored and transferred to DVD. There is the addition of a recording of Warren Mackenzie’s remembrances of his time at the Leach Pottery that is apparently different to, yet enhances the experience of watching and listening to Leach himself. For those with a passion for all things Leachean… write to…..   films@martygrossfilms.com

John Anderson (the UK one)  is particularly remembered for his series of six short films for potters made between 1963 and 1985 and distributed among the pottery fraternity of the UK. The video masters of five of these were given to the Leach Pottery for safekeeping. The sixth, and possibly best-known is devoted to the Yorkshire country potter, Isaac Button, the master tape of which is preserved in the Yorkshire Film Archive and a copy can possibly be purchased from there.

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Slow Clay in Melbourne is a private teaching centre where the Director, Jane Sawyer, was trained in Japan. If you are visiting Melbourne, Slow Clay offers weekly, day or evening classes, on and off-wheel. There is a specialty with some wheel classes teaching Japanese techniques. There are also Guest Artist workshops such as an up-coming one on wood-fire with Robert Barron where he comes to town for a weekend of making and a while later the students (or only their pots if necessary) go to his country workshop in Gippsland, to load their pots into the kiln and help with the firing. info@slowclay.com

Slow Clay is also planning a Japan Tour in April 6-19 next year covering the historical and traditional to contemporary perspectives. The tour starts in Osaka and ends in Kyoto focussing on the rich area of South-West Honshu and includes sites that are difficult to access as a regular tourist. The tour will be led by Jane Sawyer and accompanied by Jo Tanaka-King – a graduate of Waseda University where she studied Mingei/folk-craft. There will be a hands-on workshop at Shussai-gama pottery as highlight. The tour will also visit workshops for indigo dying, kasuri textiles, a resist-paste stencilling and visit Onta – a pottery village in the hills of Kyushu and stay for a night at a hot springs inn in Yufun. For inquiries and more details go to…

www.japanculkturaltours.com.au

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Japanese Pottery Equipment (e.g. tools or 100 different tissue transfer designs, and various accessories… can be purchased through www.japanesepotteryequipment.com and using the code ‘subversive’ gets you a discount of 15%.

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More things Japanese or Japanese in ambiance can be found at www.mingei.com.au a storehouse of indigo-dyed textiles, clothing such as jackets, trousers, shirts etc in this – with shibori incorporated, plus the simple, wood-fired porcelain, superb tableware of Sandy Lockwood.

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Another ceramic teaching centre that could prove to be more of a holiday…. In Sayan, Ubud, in the middle of  Bali.

Gaya Ceramic and Design.

Offers two-week intensives or weekly/casual classes, “taught by internationally renowned clay artists from all over the world”.

Resident Artist Programme for two months – “for concentration, growth and exposure”

www.gayacac@gayaceramic.com

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And another…

Vallauris Institute of Arts – an international art centre on the French Riviera offers classes, masters and student workshops, a variety of cultural activities, exhibition opportunities and hold Artist in Residence programmes. This is pretty clearly a business rather than any philanthropic opportunity but more info can be obtained from www.vallauris-ioa.com

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Finally, a new magazine hitherto undiscovered. CERAMICS IRELAND is much like the good old New Zealand Potter used to be… A4 format and a mix of articles, mainly about the regional but one or two with international focus about individual and groups of artists, exhibitions, galleries etc. You’ll find exhibition reviews of all sorts and articles on the degree shows at the six tertiary training centres still extant in Ireland. (Aren’t they lucky!) There are also how-to-do-it sections, obits and generally uncritical book reviews, news on competitions and events (They get to hold some in real castles!). Articles range from the critical text through to those that read as if written by the artist’s best friend.

It’s a kindly eye upon the wide arena that is current practice in Ireland. The stated purpose of the magazine is to promote and inform about, and to, ceramics in Ireland. And that is exactly what it does.

My eye was drawn to the stunning work on the cover made by a fairly recent graduate, David Withers, who has just been offered a scholarship by The Royal College.

Ireland Cover

And so to Adelaide..

Straight from the USA I transferred to a plane headed for Adelaide and the Subversive Clay Triennale there. As is usual this was good conference, particularly as this time there was usually only a choice of two events/talks to choose from. Sometimes there are three or even four which makes too many layers for most (this is not NCECA!). Here and there were workshops for half to one full day dealing with a range of subjects on a more intimate scale for particular audiences.  There were also the principal guest’s workshops held before the main event – in this case Masamichi Yoshikawa (Japan) and Akoi Takamori (Jpn/USA) It was great to speak with Kate Fitzharris who glowed from her days spent taking in Akio Takamori’s workshop. We shall watch with interest for what develops.

About 400+ attended this Oz gathering that is now firmly scheduled for every three years. The University seating arrangements were excellent for seeing but hearing was a bit of a problem unless down the front, as sound systems were not that efficient always – depending upon how many were in the room. There were about 35 exhibitions set up here and there around town and as usual only those within a distinct coo-ee of the university received much by way of visits as there was enough going on at the main venue with talks and exhibitions. It must be hard to go to all that trouble, and usually expense, to set up a show for an event like this and have few visit but that is the usual pattern no matter where the conference is in the world. Santa Fe this year – small town that it is, proved too hot to gallop around to see more than the handful directly accessible to the conference venue and Paris, two years ago, despite the ease of ‘Le Metro’ was also problematical once the conference began. I guess, if really determined to see everything possible the only answer is to get in to town a few days early and get around. But often, the locals can let you know what might, or definitely should not, be missed and you don’t meet them often, or have access to the conference map, until the event starts. Chickens and eggs… maybe stay on for a few days for an extra look-see. Anyway, the main event is the conference and its talk-fest. Conferences are welcome respite for many as an opportunity to listen to some research, talks on work or debates around issues and, of course, meet old friends and make new ones or meet artists whose work is only known of by image in 2D.

On the stage at Subversive Clay – Paul Scott in the chair for the day and line-up of speakers includes, Penny Byrne, Geoff Mincham, Anton Reijnders (Belgium) and Akio Takamori (Jpn/USA)

For me, the main exhibition, held usually the evening before the conference proper starts was a great opportunity to see ‘in the flesh’ not only a re-acquaintance with what Prue Venables is thinking about these days

Prue Venables ( everything gently ovalled)

Prue Venables

– still that clarity of edge so that the tension between the gentle distortions of form and the resultant change in profile is held poised. There was also chance to become more familiar with the accomplished work of Bruce Nuske and Kristen Coelho whose work was only known by image. Nuske’s scholarship in the history of applied arts is evident in his detailed surfaces and immaculate renderings while Coelho’s bleeding brown spots initially raise thoughts of tin-ware until the limpid beauty of the glaze reveals that all is ceramic.

Bruce Nuske

Bruce Nuske

Kirsten Coelho

Kirsten Coelho

It was a porcelain show – a medium of great contemporary interest in Australia – lots of it around and sometimes I was led to wonder why this particular expression needed to be made in porcelain – but most used its translucency and whiteness to full advantage and meaning. Later in the conference was the opening of a show by Stephen Benwell – moved from being painter of the figurative on vessels to making very fine free-standing figures in their own insouciant right, based on the classical male nude, followed by a great talk by him on his work as pastiche – “an unattractive word meaning copy of a copy – but an interesting idea”.

Stephen Benwell

Another featured artist was Penny Byrne – not a ‘maker’ in any traditional sense but one who uses her art restoration skills to alter ready-made figurines, often to make social commentary on the contemporary.

Penny Byrne, “Nip ‘n Tuck”

Exhibitions were many and varied e.g.  Hyperclay was provocative in unexpected ways, where what I think are currently all educators in ceramics demonstrated the new and very contemporary, (images 8521 and 8522) such as Ian Bird’s projections upon otherwise unmarked plates and platters – playing at the intersection of the digital and the hand-made producing endless variations on pattern and movement,

Stephen Bird

Stephen Bird

…or children’s pre-loved stuffed toys, over-scaled and looking more like they have been cast in lead,

pre-loved

… to large scale industrially-made ceramic animals and statuary – transformed to becoming close to what is happening to tiny figurines all over the place,

transformed

… through to Jackie Clayton’s  over-sized gleam of some industrial structure  displaying what looked like funerary ceramic floral arrangements under glass domes  entitled Rilke and the Autoclave.

Jackie Clayton

In conjunction with this exhibition, there was a Teachers Workshop for secondary school teachers called Clay at the Edges, focussing on how contemporary artists use clay in unconventional ways. Now wouldn’t that be useful? Some awareness of clay practices by high school teachers? So as to pass this on and contribute to grow the structures for ceramics at tertiary level?

Much interest arose from the announcement of the Alcorso Vitrify Award. This is a new and useful way of arranging a competition so that, unlike most competitions where the resultant, often frustrating, show usually consisting one-pot-shots, is avoided. This Award of $10,000 made by the Alcorso Foundation – a not for profit cultural organisation, is open nationally and non-acquistive. (go to www.alcorso.org.au) The Award was first established last year – 2011.

The procedure is that proposals are invited and from these, four finalists are invited to develop a body of work for a group exhibition and finally the selection of one as grand prize-winner. This places some extra pressure and responsibility upon the judging panel as they are not only weighed with the final choice of a single artist’s group of works but prior to this have to know that the artists they selected as finalists are capable, in every way, of producing the work outlined in the submitted proposal.

Judges included: Noel Frankham formerly Director of Object in Sydney and currently Head of Art in Hobart University Schoool of Art; Prue Venables, internationally notable ceramic artist, former winner of the FCCA (1995) and currently Creative Director for ceramics at the Jam Factory, and Robert Reason, curator of Dec. Arts at the Art Gallery of S.A. (and former Kiwi)

Finalists were Ian Bird, Neville French, Tania Rollond and Julie Bartholomew. All with excellently conceived and rendered, although entirely dissimilar from one another, work. The winner was Neville French with a group of elemental porcelain vessels that distilled an essence of place via an expressive use of glaze and its relationship to form, space and light. His sources were the dry lakes region of Willandra – a  World Heritage Site of profound significance for its record of human cultural presence and geological evolution over 120,000 years. The work offered quietude and transcendence.

Neville French

Neviller French

Neville French

Neville French: Gently altered, wheel thrown pieces – producing a poetic sense of a vast topography that was recognised by the judging panel.

Here also is Tania Rollond’s project  for the competition.

Tania Rollond

I have to say though, that apart from Akio Takamori’s single, almost life-size figurative work I was most immediately drawn to the apparently simple exhibits by Masamichi Yoshikawa. I have seen his work previously and there are also some pieces in Auckland Museum as part of the Itoh collection donation, but the three pieces on show in Adelaide stopped me in my tracks so utterly beautiful was the confluence of celadon and porcelain.  Call me old-fashioned but it can still make my mouth water and fill me with lust.

Clark/Del Vecchio Auction of Ceramics

CLARK/DEL VECCHIO AUCTION OF CERAMICS
For those avid collectors out there, Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio with Cowans Auctions have a modern and contemporary ceramics auction coming up on October 31st at Cowans Auction House in the American Mid-West. Mainly English and American work (but some from Japan) and the interesting thing is that English work (with the exception of Rie and Coper) has lower estimates, on the whole, than the same work receives in the UK secondary market. The same applies to the Japanese potters, Kanjiro Kawai and Kimpei Nakamura. Which , as it is in the USA, and their history is very different to others, is understandable.

There are a couple of fine Ries and Copers, if you can afford them, but also other ceramists from the UK are represented, some at bargain estimates.  Apart from the Rie and the Coper, main interest must lie, for Americans, with Beth Cavener Stichter’s ‘Olympia‘ which is a seminal work and carries the highest estimate in the 289 lot offering.  But the ‘names’ are many and varied: Woodman, Leach, Fergusson, Tchalenko, Kawai, Takamori, Nagle, Nakamura, Rady, Swindell, Mackenzie, Maltby, Poncelet, Henderson, Trim, Barton, Notkin, Cooper, Smith, Wood, Oestreich, et al.  Worth a look?

It can be found at www.cowansauctions.com and it is auction 289.

 

postcard from america

I went to Santa Fe after Los Angeles for the International Academy of Ceramics Assembly held there. This assembly is held in a different city each year. In 2010 it was Paris while in 2014 it will be Dublin and 2016 in Barcelona then 2018 in Taipei. Each city hosts the conference in its own style rather than any pre-determined way so each time it is different and delegates ‘go with the flow’ of the region/country.  The conference was principally held in the La Fonda Hotel which, like all buildings in Santa Fe is adobe. The hotel is old, has an American heritage listing and is very grand.

Outside on the street was parked the Airstream – a 30foot, 1969 aluminiummodernist style caravan that for the past 11 years has served as a nomadic pottery (in American this means tableware) gallery on wheels.

The owner – Aleghany Meadows – sees it as an economically viable way to market a variety of potters work and he drives it around the USA to a variety of conferences, craft fairs and other interesting venues. I have read about it at intervals over the years but this was my first acquaintance. Here are some images…

This is The Airstream- parked outside a side entrance to the La Fonda hotel in Santa Fe. A mobile functional ware display venue.

Inside the Airstream.

Inside the Airstream.

Inside the Airstream

Inside the Airstream. Pastel-hued mugs and bowls.

Inside the Airstream. A large, surprisingly light teapot with comfort-focussed handle.

Inside the Airstream. Candelabra, jug, mugs and beakers.

Inside the Airstream. Elegantly simple linear surface decoration.

In Santa Fe is a long street called Canyon Road lined almost exclusively with many dozens of galleries. Some have tourist stuff of a Native American bent – extremely colourful and decorative souvenirs in every medium imaginable. However some have first class work and are worth a look.

Another gallery on Canyon Rd

Garth Clark heading across to examine some old adobe walls that are starting to crumble.

The middle of Canyon Road

Another gallery on Canyon Road

Santa Fe Clay is (as most in America) a private (read ‘for profit’ in  American) business that does the same job as the ASP and other Society  teaching structures around New Zealand. Avra Leodas, is owner and has  been in business there for many years, and it seems to be thriving. She  has several full-time and part-time staff as well as visiting workshop  leaders from all across the USA and occasionally from off-shore.   Santa Fe Clay is located in the Railway Arts Area – no train link  direct to Santa Fe any more just all those old and large railway  buildings which has been turned into an arts area separate from the town  centre activity that is more dedicated to Native American arts. The  Railway Arts area has many private galleries (read ‘for profit’) and  shops selling Indian or South American textiles, hand carved furniture,  artisan jewellery etc and one large, very contemporary public one (read  ‘not for profit,’ in American), where I saw Ai WeiWei’s paint covered  ceramic jars from the ? Dynasty, in addition to photographic  installations, contemporary sculpture, video and animation art and, good  heavens, even a couple of paintings. The area would take at least a  whole day, maybe two, to thoroughly explore.

Santa Fe Clay is an amalgam of many things all of which are  complementary in American terms. The commercial area sells, tools, clay, kilns, books and ready prepared glazes along with a large space for bulk  clays of many types and  glaze ingredients for those preferring the DIY  approach. There is a spacious teaching/working area – with far more  tables and fewer wheels than we’d find in NZ (Paul Scott says he has  never seen a teaching area like the ASP with so many wheels per sq m.!).   Then there’s an exhibition area that can be expanded when necessary  and Avra shows many of the best the USA has to offer on a regular basis,  (there is an eighteen month programme in place) covering every  expression imaginable even to raw clay, large scale installations, by  Walter McConnell, where it will all be shovelled up in the end. So  quality, rather than profit, is the aim here. The exhibition gallery  area is simple but well presented in the sort of spaces one would find  in the home. There are regular exhibitions and she keeps the unsold work in another display area after the exhibition is completed for some months. This  section is busier than the current exhibits but serves as useful references and sells steadily. Also there is a dedicated packing area  for works to be shipped anywhere with every type of packaging imaginable. Finally there is a selling area where regular attendees to the classes  and workshops’ work is offered for sale. This displays everything from  mugs through to objects and it all feels very up to date.   It’s a one-stop-shop for anything you would like to do in clay in Santa Fe.

Work from earlier show on display at Santa fe Clay

On display at Santa fe Clay

On display at Santa Fe Clay

Lemon squeezer on display at Santa fe Clay

Condiment set at Santa Fe Clay

A veryu nice teapot with far too much clutter behind (that could not be moved) at Santa Fe Clay

On display at Santa Fe Clay. Peter Beasecker has sent entries to the Fletcher at intervals.

Chris Gustin

Tom Spleth

Cheryl Ann Thomas

A shelf-ful as one work. Edward Eberle.

Detail – Edward Eberle

Press moulded bowls at Santa fe Clay

Every house in Santa Fe seems to have one of these…sometimes two – one out and one inside

Outside Santa fe Clay – modest outside yet huge inside with gallery space, teaching area, work store, shop area, supplies and packing areas…. it’s huge!

Cups on sale…

A small part of the ready-made glazes for sale at Santa Fe Clay

Tools, batts, even kilns for sale in this area

Books for sale

…

Members work on display and for sale.

Ken Price Retrospective at Los Angeles County Museum (LACMA)

Banners all over town for the Ken Price retrospective exhibition at LACMA in Los Angeles.
Big show and great work but as displayed by no less than Frank Gehry – a disappointment because …
The room was overpoweringly large rather than the intimate scale the work needed.  All cups – which are different on every facet- were displayed against a wall so the other sides could not be viewed.  A positive forest of individual plinths when one large sweep of support for works of very similar scale could have been so much more effective.  Almost no mention of the word ‘ceramic’, only ‘sculpture’.

However there is a big fat book on his life and work to accompany the show, just out – could not read but just flipped through. Illustrations are splendidly full page and look very good with intimate detail. No photography allowed in the show. Too heavy to post or bring but Amazon/Book Depository will have at bargain prices any day.

Michael Heizer’s ‘Hanging Rock’ in the ground at LACMA in Los Angeles.
All threat removed because of Health and Safety reulations!

In the Ceramics and Glass display at LACMA.
Magdalene Odundo’s work on display. It was the scale that surprised, having only ever seen her work previously in 2D on a page or a screen. That is an average sized Hamada in the background!

Two New Books

The 500 Larks

The series of Lark published books on ceramics, and  a half-dozen or so other subjects in applied arts,  has reached a zenith, or is it nadir, with the latest, most recent publication, Best of 500, Ceramics : Celebrating a Decade in Clay. The cover blurb states: ‘The world’s foremost anthology of contemporary ceramics presents a time capsule of the finest functional and sculptural work over the past ten years. Juried by top ceramicists and enlivened by expert commentary from leading artists, collectors, curators and gallery owners, this book proves an inspiring and thought provoking collection.’

This assemblage claims to be the selection of the best from the earlier books in the ceramics series – 500 Teapots, 500 Cups, 500 Chargers and Platters, 500 Bowls, 500 Figures, 500 Sculptures, 500 Pitchers, 500 Animals, 500 Vases… in clay. There were probably challenges in finding more sub-divisions so a compilation extracted from all was the next step.

Declaration of interest here: I was asked by the managing editor, to write 400 words on the state of clay as I saw it. Did that, and now find it at the front of the book with every possibly positive thing I wrote IN LARGE LETTERS. Along with me are a number of others who also have the positive bits of their texts WRIT LARGE. It’s that sort  of book – find the  good news all the way. Keep anything else small.

The 500 images included have been chosen by some 64 jurors. Yes that’s right – sixty four.  And what a surprise…. each juror who is also an artist included a work of their own in the 500 compilation.  The images are a mixed bag, clearly supplied by the artists because of the different styles and backgrounds but all of good publishable photographic quality. However, because of the range of work included – platters and chargers, vases, teapots, sculpture, animals, bowls, figures and cups,  making some sense of sequencing clearly proved difficult and grouping for the various approaches was not attempted.  Probably wisely,  but the book lacks structure because no alternative was presented.

Here and there can be found some text accompanying a particular image, occasionally written by the maker or possibly written by that juror, and always positive, but other than that, there is no informative text of any kind. So, for those  who just like looking at the pictures – this is the book for you.  For those who like a little meat alongside all that syrup – cast your eyes further down the menu. There are so many books out there. Being in the USA right now I am able to look occasionally and there are more than I could have imagined – seems to be at least a  half dozen for every attitude/genre/expression/ process/dispute/topic imaginable in ceramics.

You’ll be interested to see that there are two representatives from New Zealand included. Peter Collis and Rick Rudd, who also served as NZ Juror. **********************************************************************************

About to be published:   Tanya Harrod’s long awaited biography about Michael Cardew.

Harrod is a fine scholar, one of the best in our field, who has been researching this for a number of years. She tells me that it must be at least ten, maybe more. Cardew was a hero for many, not least Harrod and Garth Clark (who was working on one of his own but ceased once Harrod’s was known of) but also our own Peter Stichbury who worked with Cardew in Nigeria and who hosted Cardew  at his home in Manurewa on two occasions.  Peter and Diane, always generous, shared the visit with others and I was lucky enough to be included on that second visit, and remember it well.

The book is called  “The Last Sane Man: Michael Cardew, modern pots, colonialism and counter culture”.  It is published by Yale University Press and will be available very soon on any number of internet sites or your nearest friendly art book supplier (if you can find one). It will be a fascinating read to learn of practices that Harrod could not support (like turning some African expression into stoneware with orientalised forms) made by a man who almost all admired enormously. As Harrod states, ‘Michael has taken me on a wonderful journey, both intellectually as well as geographically.’

Keep eyes peeled for this one. I have searches in place for a copy and will post as soon as……

A Million Miles

It takes twenty-two minutes to walk from Peter Collis’s exhibition at Masterworks to Richard Stratton’s at Anna Miles Gallery. Twenty-two minutes and a light year or two. Peter Collis is showing his large scale, bone china, mainly deep bowl and vase forms. This is a subsequent outing after launching them at NorthArt earlier this year following time spent researching the vagaries of casting bone china. This time he knew better what to expect and, fine craftsman that he is, understood how to encourage the shifts and variations in what would otherwise be formally immaculate forms.

We have come to expect from Collis a close adherence to profile with an often exaggerated volume on a diminutive, impeccably turned foot with a small top opening affording balance. His forms were instantly recognisable wherever one saw them; and that was pretty much everywhere.  Besides those marketing abilities, Collis is a highly skilled thrower and one of our leaders in technical aspects – he can make his own lustre, formulate a clay body for a particular purpose and adjust a glaze to give him precisely what he requires in an eyelash drop. Here he demonstrates he is not afraid to push other limits.  The predictability and ubiquity of his forms and surfaces perhaps led to the grant application to develop bone china, something not tackled by a potter here. And not a lot elsewhere either. It’s a challenging medium.  Bone china is usually cast and his moulds were of a scale beyond what is typically seen for this body formulation, even by industry, the customary producer in this material originally developed to replicate porcelain.

The slumping and deformations that evidenced due to the attempted scale must have initially offered a measure of disbelief for such an experienced craftsman. But many of these pieces are most satisfying particularly with some vertically furrowed pieces where there was an abrupt contort to a rim and a subtly restrained collapse beneath that folded – something like a half inflated datura flower, or an amplified outward shift in profile as the horizontally grooved piece is rotated. They dispute the conventional perfection of stepped Guggenheim/Keith Murray-like forms and interrupt that slide-around by the eyes when anticipating precision. It‘s  a bit like a return to the 70s when all firings were fuel, usually oil, and unpacking day was a recurrent emotional frisson of expectant speculation  followed by elation or despair. Sometimes both. Collis agrees that the old excitement is back. He has no idea what might present on kiln opening.  I’m so far unconvinced by the almost completely collapsed forms. For me they depart too far from his usual controlled volumes and they cross a line I was unaware was there.  As does the part of the slide presentation showing the completed forms lit by reflected vivid orange colour. This is not part of the work but projections onto, inadvertent or not, and while attractive doesn’t hold the ring of truth I need.  Artifice has no place in recording art work. It then becomes the photographer’s art. Showing process and allowing visual effects in the same presentation confuses what is being demonstrated.

Peter Collis is a superb maker of the formalist pot, few can match his abilities and sheer application of years of hard-won knowledge, quite apart from his prolific production. This new venture into a difficult medium is deserving of applause and the best of the pieces are highly successful works, where the fullness of belly is off-set by an insouciant twist to rim or a small slump that exaggerates a curve. He’s at the beginning of a road here.  Developments will be watched with interest.

Everything popular is wrong – Oscar Wilde

P₂O5

While Collis’s work is about process and the formalist concern, Richard Stratton’s focus is also on process but less about his, than those developed by industry.  Industry everywhere, anywhere and whenever.  Stratton’s research into a large range of commercial production techniques, some of which have long been discarded, is prodigious. His works reflect the allure these methods hold for him and he will explain, with great glee, how industry came to do things the way they did, while his enthusiasm for ceramic history, further coloured by political observations, is introduced in ways that adds layers of aesthetic and conceptual complexities to the finished pieces.

In this current exhibition at Anna Miles Gallery, for example, Stratton musters a miscellany of elements that engage tracing ceramic history from Whieldon ware – 18^th century Stoke-on-Trent table-ware that featured a three-colour glaze developed from what was seen on imported Chinese ware and much later landed in New Zealand with early migrant industrial potters and which can be observed on the domestic production from one or two of our own early manufacturers as sponge effects. Others appropriating this, in their different ways, have been Takeshi Yasuda and Walter Keeler. Stratton adds further complexities by the additions of miniature Staffordshire figures – often seen as shepherdesses or formally posed couples.  These figurines are poised like architectural elements as finials on teapot lids. Or, looking closely, scaffold supported couples positioned into indentations on the sides of a teapot textured like vertiginous cliff faces and recalling shrines set similarly in Far-Eastern brush paintings.  They are also present in tableaux set upon teapot and jar shoulders, supported by his current scaffolding motif, where titles like ‘Wellington Wheildon’ and ‘Crown Lynn Wheildon’ indicate how the work might be read.  There are curious and engaging resonances throughout the collection of vessels Stratton has gathered for this exhibition and he has clearly had fun assembling the various components from agate ware spouts to jointed bamboo handles or replicating elements of silver tableware. His is a pick’n-mix magpie approach to tableware histories.  In this he is in line with a number of English contemporary ceramists. Paul Scott, Carol McNicol and Neil Brownsword are just some who quote their industrial history, in whole or part, by hand-making often ironic references to what was a major export trade begun in the Industrial Revolution where Britain was the powerhouse, and is now reduced to historical museum displays as manufacturing of much of the world’s tableware has transferred to the Far East.

Perhaps the work most summative of this is ‘Made in China’, where a teapot is structured from a number of variously replicated styles producing an aggregate that spans media and periods.  Stratton joins these ranks but maintains a necessary regionalism with his referencing of early small manufactories in New Zealand and, on some works, a scaffold embrace that serves more personal memories.

Stratton is unique in this country in his pursuit of these historical connections and while his political issues have softened from their earlier explicit presence, for those who wish to see they are still there, as is the personal.  In ‘Chinatown Dunstan’, a jar is enfolded by his scaffolding motif, in this instance looking flimsy and temporary, which perhaps cites the bamboo structures used by Chinese miners in the 19thC Otago gold-rush.  However it’s his layering of the historical and tracing the ways international trade has introduced diverse influences that have in turn produced new aesthetics in form and decoration of our domestic pottery that takes priority in the current show.  It’s one-off work for connoisseurs; for it takes some knowledge of, or an interest in understanding, something of ceramic history in order to engage fully with what Stratton is about. This makes for a somewhat specialised audience that would widen with limiting to a single topic on each vessel. We are not so used to unravelling layers on a teapot or tureen as are the British. But it is intelligent, thought-provoking, well executed work for those prepared to connect, most appropriately displayed in a vintage vitrine.

Wellington Whieldon, 2012

Made in China, 2012

 

images supplied by Masterworks Gallery (Peter Collis) and Anna Miles Gallery (Richard Stratton)

 

Shifting Shadows

Shifting shadows of influence continue to cloud our field so that sometimes it’s difficult to sort wood from trees.  The increasingly muddy waters around marketing ceramics and the involvement of some auction houses within this arena causing conflation of the primary and secondary markets is one of the murky bits that poses conundrums for artists.

Some facts:  There has always been an occasional artist, needy of rapid funds, who has placed a piece fresh from the kiln into auction.  That’s their decision. And it’s a one-off.

There has been some manipulation of the values for various artist’s works by buyers and sellers. Even, it is said, some artists have been known to collude…

Auction values are largely determined on reputation.  The monetary value of a mark or signature piece bears little relationship to other worth, as determined by peers or experts. Many of the current collectors buy only on name and not what they can see because often, they cannot ‘see’.  Connoisseurship is in markedly short supply.

Some auction houses have been in the secondary market in a serious way for about fifteen years, either through actually starting the secondary market for ceramics or having an agent who knows most collectors and has built relationships,  so that is where collectors will place the pieces they are de-accessioning.

Some more facts: Our culture has risen from a mutually helpful struggle for survival in what was a post-war field. One supportive structure was the formation of co-operatives to market ware. In the halcyon days of the 60s and 70s it was easy as the market could not get enough and it mattered not how one sold, there was always a retailer wanting what could be spared. However after mid-80s or so this easy market underwent change. Now, co-ops barely exist anywhere, selling from the gate arouses little interest, the average retailers have disappeared although studio sales often do fine once a level of reputation is reached.  But the best hope is a professional gallery picking up the artist, nurturing the career, doing what only a good professional gallery can do and offering opportunities for exhibition at intervals. We now have some good professionally-run galleries that offer new talent early occasions to show, like Objectspac and, maybe the newly reconfiguring Academy in Wellington. Another layer is the professionally-run craft media gallery like Masterworks, Avid, Form etc. Now we have a number of ‘white cubes’ that customarily show the so-called fine arts also demonstrating support for some artists working  in craft media – drawn from throughout the spectrum. All major cities have at least one or two and in Auckland there are many more. At least six.

Enter the auction house – designed to serve the secondary market, and useful it is too (except they resist paying the maker a share of the income they and the sellers make) But, good secondary market prices help elevate the primary market price in these days of internet access to everything.  Auction houses are not doing much of the specialty push for ceramics that they did in earlier times – markets are affected everywhere and the increasing prices paid for ceramics applies only to very few ceramic artists. The rest are still at bargain basement levels. I’m told there have not been many/any new collectors entering the market for quite a while.

Now we have one auction house openly soliciting new work for auction. They don’t mind where it comes from – top level, fiscally buoyant, avidly collected artists who sell well in the primary market through to students from the Distance Learning Course and all in between are being targeted.        And hence the conundrums….

It is, of course, entirely up to the artist/maker how they sell their work and it must be admitted, the auction house’s 15% +GST and a $35 “promotion” fee is tempting for those artists who remember well the free-wheeling days of the 60s and 70s, to make a little extra for their efforts. It’s also tempting for new artists, with no gallery representation yet, to see it as an opportunity to display their work in “the exhibition” that is offered. It’s even tempting for those between so that way they can maybe pass on work that has been sitting around for a while. All reasonably understandable, but in these days of necessarily increasing professionalism there are some other points that must also enter the equation….

Richard Parker always maintained that the reason we do not enjoy a lively circuit of professional galleries in our field was that we set up co-ops and marketed our own alongside gate and studio sales and open days – wanting a bigger slice of the fiscal pie instead of supporting a range of profitable galleries that, in these harder times, would be supporting and working for us.

Those artists who are a part of a gallery’s ‘stable’ might consider that they owe some loyalty. Yes, these professionally run white cubes and craft galleries take more in commission but in return they invest time, energy and money in an artist they consider has talent, potential and fits their gallery style. They do this by providing expensive space for exhibition opportunities and generate publicity in ways only they can; they have, and utilise, contacts within the art and related worlds so they are in a position to advance prospects for the artist; they research and actually write or assist writing grant applications and work for other opportunities such as residencies for their artists; they gift artists exclusive access to what is one of their primary resources, which is their client list and they have been known to pay writers and photographers for texts and top-quality images on their artists’ work for features in relevant publications. They have contributed to books that include their artist’s work and have even produced books about their artists.  None of these are to be sneezed at in these days when it’s mostly self-help and every man for himself.

The case off-shore is quite different, as I well recall when I visited the studio of a major USA ceramist who took me into her basement showing me years of older work – much returned from exhibitions. One piece had just been sold directly to a public institution in a distant State and, being ignorant and from here, I offered that she would therefore keep all revenue (some US$17500). She looked at me in surprise and responded that if she did that and her gallery found out , as they eventually would, she’d be ‘dead on the water’ with all galleries in town!. Once she was paid she would be giving her regular gallery the USA standard 50% commission, even though it hurt!

Those with a gallery in town that works for them, even if every service listed is not always on offer, might find, if they do sell via other means that all is well, or they might find that when they front-up for that next exhibition slot that it is not so readily available as previously.

For students and recent students in ceramics courses who have no gallery, while they might consider that their work is top quality and deserving of high returns because of all that work invested, there will be others showing at “the exhibition” that don’t have the same standards and simply want – and have often been given to expect- some return for the cost of all those lessons and materials. Well, any experienced ceramist can tell you that a show is only as good as the worst piece present.  It only takes a couple of poor pieces to pull down the rest.

Times have changed and we no longer have a ready market for new work except that which meets  criteria recognised by the demands of fine art or that which is superbly fitted for function while being individually, stylistically executed. We need more of both, as gallerists will tell you. We don’t need a heap more of what lies in between.

I’d suggest, if making work that bears no interest for the galleries, and attracts no attention in exhibitions like Portage (which has exhibited many never-seen-before artists) then maybe the work needs more work? Keep going and stay developing. It’s not instant.  If the artist is still convinced that what they offer is great and has simply been passed over, maybe put it away for 25 years until the retrospective and it can be brought out so as to prove how mistaken was the audience of now. But meantime, perhaps start something new.

I remain unconvinced that any auction house can display ceramic works to full advantage. They have neither the expertise not the equipment to do this anywhere near as well as a good gallery and set pieces out only as best they can on what they’ve got. So I remain unconvinced that selling, as primary market, through an auction house serves anyone any good (except the auction house) and muddling the re-sales with new work does what I wonder?  Even with a major publicity thrust that exceeds all that has gone before, are there really new collectors out there, cheque books poised, awaiting fresh talent and if there are – will they head to an auction house or to Objectspace or a private gallery? The auction market attention, for those that go, will remain with the few artists whose work has attracted most interest, and highest values, over the past few years and unknown names and marks are unlikely to benefit in any way from this exercise and possibly suffer the humiliation of being passed in, or over.

I’m happy to have my mind changed if anyone can tell me something different and accept that there may be angles I’ve not yet considered.  But right now it seems to me that ceramics is in no way advantaged by this muddying of the waters and that the answer, or a good part of it, lies in increasing professionalism and a modicum of integrity.  Either the artist is a specialist with a career plan that is taken seriously and adhered to, or is a something else with a hobby that is satisfying and rewarding in its own way. That gap Garth Clark talked of when he was here has opened. We’re in the 21srCentury and we can no longer have it both ways.

Congratulations

Congratulations to Vic Evans of Nelson who has recently completed his PhD in Art History  – something that has occupied him for some years now.  His thesis is entitled ‘Constructing Craft: Harmony and Conflict within the New Zealand Studio Craft Movement 1949-1992.’

So, it embraces the political shifts and other happenings within craft here in NZ,  from their post-war genesis to the demise of the NZ Craft Council, documenting a rising professionalism particularly within ceramics and also the increasing influence of various organisations such as the NZSP and the various fibre guilds. For those interested in histories, and how certain things came to pass, it will be fascinating reading.  It is work like this that helps elevate our field from being viewed as a variously rewarding occupation or recreation, by supporting ceramics’ parity with other genre under the wider umbrella of art.

This makes Vic the second PhD from our field, after Leo King’s work with public sculpture installations back in the ‘90s. These accomplishments are bucket-loads of work – research, verification, analysis and evaluations and then writing.  Believe me, ploughing through the National Archives is far from simple. The amount of sheer slog entailed is not to be dismissed, quite apart from putting all that work into relevant and readable form. The thesis can be accessed via Massey University’s site, or write to Dr. Vic.  The title of ‘Doctor’ in a research based degree is a major attainment and our sincere congratulations must go to ex- (and still occasional) potter, Vic, for his successful completion. Seriously, very well done!

 

Ken Clark 1922 – 2012

Apologies for simply offering a direct lift from The Telegraph due to current time pressures. However I’d like to add that Ken Clark made several visits back to New Zealand after decamping to London. If you re-read old copies of the NZ Potter magazine you will see some of them recorded and if you read carefully, he did his very best to widen the scope of the New Zealand pottery expression and culture away from that determined full focus upon the Anglo-oriental that we had. Those quotes you can read from him are insightful and engaging around matters of style and philosophy. I sometimes suspect that in the end he realised it was something of a lost cause and eventually confined visits to the personal to see old friends and family rather than to give workshops and talks. His friend, pottery colleague and fellow Kiwi, Brian Newman also visited back but as far as I know, never joined the fray to deviate NZ from the full-on attitude towards the Anglo-oriental that these ex-pats could observe with the benefit/greater objectivity of their time away. Clark might have had spirits lifted had he observed the extension to our expression with a lowering of temperature and introduction of colour in the 80s. There are a number of Ken Clark works in the collections at some of our major institutions. You can always ask to see them. Further, his pieces can sometimes be spotted in junk shops, collecting dust on the shelves as our secondary market also has its main focus on the Anglo-oriental and what directly arose from that, rather than looking at our larger, and infinitely more interesting history.

Ken Clark, who has died aged 89, was among the leading ceramicists of his generation. His strengths included a sure feel for shape when designing solid objects such as candlesticks; masterly ability in imparting a particular hue to a glaze; and sureness of touch in applying a design to ceramics then firing.

Among his greatest triumphs was recreating the red lustre used a century earlier by the potter-novelist William De Morgan. This arose from a commission for red tiles by the film director Michael Winner. Clark went on to fathom the secrets of De Morgan’s other glazes, including those of Islamic origin which had been almost completely lost between the late Middle Ages and De Morgan’s rediscovering them in the 1870s.

Such skills brought Clark commissions from other patrons, whose celebrity could match the lustre of his own tiles. Socially, his crowning achievement was to reproduce the Windsor Castle dairy’s tiles following the disastrous fire there of 1992. He also made copious decorative ceramics for the Sultanate of Oman.

Artistically, he joined his contemporaries’ rebellion against the Bernard Leach school of gentlemanly, muted colours, substituting for them a fiery chromatic riot inspired by Picasso’s and Matisse’s work on display in the South of France, which he visited on his honeymoon atop a Vespa scooter, with his new wife (and muse-in-the-making) riding pillion.

Kenneth Inman Carr Clark was born on July 31 1922 in Nelson, New Zealand, the second son of Aubrey Clark, a farms inspector. The “Carr” commemorated his 18th-century ancestor John Carr of York, architect of the Crescent at Buxton and (with Robert Adam) of Harewood House.

At Nelson College, New Zealand’s oldest school, Ken won several drawing prizes. Ill health, then the war, curtailed his education. He initially joined the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, but transferred to the Royal Navy, taking part in the 1944 Normandy landings, of which he made superb drawings. He was mentioned in despatches.

Clark stayed on in Britain, enrolling at the Slade, where he was taught by Stanley Spencer. In 1953 he founded Kenneth Clark Pottery (later Ceramics), together with his wife-to-be Ann Wynn-Reeves, whom he married the following year. The firm’s premises on Clipstone Street, Fitzrovia, were where Vanessa Bell had created her pottery.

He designed items for the Denby Ware and Bristol ranges of household crockery. Late in life he concentrated on reproducing Arts and Crafts tiles designed not just by De Morgan but also by William Morris and the architect Philip Webb. Ann, however, was the firm’s principal designer of motifs and decorative emblems, Clark using them to enliven its basic ceramic lines.

The firm’s list of private patrons included John Cleese , David Attenborough , Ben Kingsley, and Felicity Lott. Wayne Sleep, on being asked what shade of blue he wanted for his tile commission, told Clark: “the colour of your eyes”.

In the late Seventies, Sir Ralph Richardson had a part in a West End play requiring him to drink endless cups of coffee. This, if undertaken faithfully, would have strained the plumbing of a man Sir Ralph’s age. Clark glazed a coffee cup brown inside to make it look permanently topped-up.

Nor were institutional and corporate clients lacking. For the accountants Arthur Andersen, Kenneth Clark Ceramics created a vast relief mural in the company’s London headquarters. Perhaps Clark’s outstanding achievement in meeting commissions was the reproduction of Islamic decorative tiles for the celebrated Debenham House (or “Peacock House”, as it is colloquially known) near Holland Park.

Clark published four books on his craft . He was appointed MBE in 1990 and awarded the Society of Designer Craftsmen’s Centennial Medal in 1991.

His wife survives him, as do a son and daughter.

source:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9454061/Ken-Clark.html