The exhibition, Fifty Years of Australian Ceramics at the Newcastle Region Art Gallery, showcases a half century of Australian pottery and ceramics from the mid twentieth century. All the works in the exhibition have been selected from the extensive Newcastle collection to illustrate the long narrative of Australian pottery development over this period, and the many cultural traditions and attitudes that have been interpreted and re-configured as an expressive contemporary Australian art form.
In fact there is work in the collection by two potters, Anne Dangar and John Perceval, that pre-dates this period and which provides a valuable insight into the beginnings of an Australian attitude and aesthetic approach which has steadily matured into the breadth of practices we know today. These early practices were influenced by alternate social models. This attitude has continued to be a strong motivation in studio ceramic practice.

The earliest work by Dangar was made at Moly-Sabata commune in France in the early 1930s where she embraced the idealism and socialist theories of the community and the cubist style of Albert Gleizes. Perceval began potting with Arthur Boyd and Peter Herbst in 1944 and at this time pottery was accepted by many artists as fine art. Perceval, unlike Merric Boyd, with his indifference to technical or practical issues in his domestic ware, had an interest in glaze surfaces and design. His less well-known commercial studio practice, from which he endeavoured to make a living, demonstrates this. The tile-panel in the Newcastle collection, made in 1951, is an example of this commercial studio practice.

The period following World War l l in Australia was one of great social upheaval and change and provided the impetus for returning service people, such as Peter Rushforth and Ivan McMeekin, to pursue an alternative career path – pottery. Others like Stanislav Halpern migrated to Australia from Europe to avoid the disaster of the war, and Les Blakebrough migrated in the years following the war. There was an optimistic desire for a change in the values of society summed up by Rushforth, ‘There are values that transcend the activity of making objects, such as a search for beauty and the validity of one’s work in relation to the community in which one lives.’1

Ken Hood and Wanda Garnsey wrote in Australian Pottery in 1972, that the lack of an Australian ceramics tradition meant that during the development years, Australian potters of necessity looked to other countries with ceramic traditions, bringing a fusion of ideas and energy. This rich amalgam of meaning and processes has led to the diverse and dynamic practice as we understand it today. This dynamism has been the result of a particular characteristic of Australian potters – independence, so that the absorption of these many traditions has not been a bland adoption resulting in derivative work but rather a drawing on the origins and social relationships which are the ongoing strengths of traditions. Today’s pottery and ceramic practices might be seen as continuing reinterpretations of many of these traditions within the context of the continuing and major social changes and attitudes in Australia.

One of the most robust influences in the development of pottery in the post-war years was that of Japan, mediated through the relationship which had developed in Japan prior to 1920 between Shoji Hamada and Bernard Leach. A Potter’s Book by Leach was published in 1940 and became a fundamental text for Australian potters, both for its technical information and its philosophical attitude to his practice. Leach’s work developed as a melding of Japanese philosophy and tradition, and mediaeval English pottery with its honesty of form, material and function. His book was the catalyst for a major change in Australia from the use of earthenware to stoneware clays, wood firing, research and experimentation with Australian clays, igneous rocks, wood ashes, feldspars and oxides.

Top: Peter Travis, Vertical Ovoid, 1969, earthenware. Purchased 1969.

The exchange between Hamada and Leach and the fusion of Japanese and English pottery aesthetics and attitudes were embraced by potters in Australia, and the term ‘studio pottery’ came to be used, exemplified by both Bernard Leach and by William Straite Murray who considered pottery as a branch of fine art.’2 This term was quickly adopted by Australian potters to define contemporary practice. Works in the collection by Peter Rushforth, Harold Hughan and Col Levy were made during the 1960s, years when this influential aesthetic and philosophy was emerging as a major influence on Australian practice. Establishing a pottery in Beecroft, NSW in 1951, and at the same time becoming a teacher of ceramics at East Sydney Technical College (ESTC), Peter Rushforth played an important role in sustaining the exchange and the adoption of this attitude to studio practice. In 1964, he worked in Japan and established contacts with a number of leading potters whom he later encouraged to visit Sydney. The extensive Newcastle collection of Japanese ceramics includes works by many of these potters including Shoji Hamada, Kanjiro Kawai, Takeichi Kawai, Tatsuzo Shimaoka, Takeishi Inoue and Yu Fujiwara and in more recent years Hiroe Swen, Shigeo Shiga and Mitsuo Shoji.
An important centre for Australian ceramic development was the Sturt Craft Centre at Mittagong NSW. In 1954 Ivan McMeekin established the Sturt pottery workshop and recruited student assistants including Gwyn John (later Hannsen Pigott) and Les Blakebrough. Sturt became a vital studio-based training production workshop and a centre for international exchange and residencies. In 1960 British potter John Chappell met Blakebrough and encouraged him to visit Japan. Chappell’s works in the collection show a refinement of form and glaze and an elegance yet to be developed by Australian potters at that time. Blakebrough was Director of Sturt from 1964 to 1972 and seventeen pottery apprentices were trained during this time. An outstanding aspect of Sturt’s influence on Australian ceramics has been its continued hosting of numerous visiting potters from all continents and particularly Britain, Asia, NZ and USA.

During the late 60s and early 70s networks of potters were gradually forming as a means of exchange and support. Ivan McMeekin, Ivan England, Mollie Douglas and Peter Rushforth founded the Potters’ Society of Australia, and its journal, Pottery in Australia, became an essential text for many self-taught potters and a vehicle for documenting Australian potters and their work.

Mitsuo Shoji, Universal Thought-Man, 1980, burnished blackware, imiitation gold and silver leaf, graphite. Purchased 1981.

Jeff Mincham, Carved Eliptical vessel, 1997, earthenware. Presented in 1997.

Marea Gazzard, Unititled, earthenware. Presented in 2003.

Although the Hamada Leach traditions appeared to be so dominant, there was a determination by some potters to shake off this dominant aesthetic. The Bauhaus concerns of ‘form following function’ had a global influence and modernist form was stripped of ‘non-essential’ decoration. Design courses were introduced into a few Australian art schools by the mid 1950s and inevitably influenced ceramics. The works by Mollie Douglas and Peter Travis show strong design qualities. Derek Smith, migrating from England to Australia in 1956, had a similarly disciplined design emphasis in his work. In 1973 he established a pottery in Sydney for Royal Doulton to produce domestic ware and one-off pieces. A marked departure in his domestic ware, that gave impetus to a quite different aesthetic, were dry, matt glazes particularly cobalt/iron glazes. This led to a trend in many studio production lines.

However, the pursuit of traditional Asian glazes using Australian materials and traditional stoneware firings has continued to be a major aesthetic for many potters represented in the Newcastle collection including Reg Preston, Harold Hughan, Col Levy, Peter Rushforth and Gwyn Hanssen Pigott. Others like Greg Daly, Bryan Trueman and Les Blakebrough extend the potential of these glazes experimenting with their interaction with dry glazes and multiple layers.

Marea Gazzard also had a design background when she began studying ceramics with Rushforth and Douglas at ESTC in the early 1950s. She was influenced by the hand-building techniques of Ruth Duckworth and the form and scale of Grecian and Etruscan pots. She persistently argued for interaction and cross-fertilisation between art forms, rejecting conventional art and craft boundaries. This was a position strongly supported by leading potters of the time as the art/craft debate increasingly marginalised craft from contemporary art practice. Post-modern art development presented itself as the antithesis of craft processes although there was a lot of common ground in the impetus to confront and debate contemporary social issues through art and craft practice. However at this stage the expressive languages of each practice were perceived as oppositional.

As well as sound design principles, Peter Travis injected a sense of adventure to the construction of hand-built ceramic forms using clay itself as decorative elements rather than applying surface decoration. He visited USA and England in 1969-71 and was enthusiastic about the experimental art environment and the exploitation of crafts media as an art language in the USA, as clay was challenged to achieve an abstract language of expression freeing the potter from the ‘object’.

The ceramic practices emerging in California in the late 60s and early 70s were initially a response to American abstract expressionism. Eventually European surrealist parody of tradition through the ironic, the absurd, and the critique of the everyday from artists such as Duchamp, emerged in the USA as ‘Funk’ and in Australia became an energising influence on ceramics. Contemporary debate, including feminist voices influenced many practices at this time. Rejection of traditional ceramic values included the glazed surface. Underfired glazes, low temperature underglazes and body stains, and even house paint were widely used.

This was also a period of intense experimentation with many ceramic traditions: majolica, tin glazes, lustre ware, Middle Eastern form, intense surface decoration, inlay and slipware, for instance, seen through the works of Alan Peascod, Victoria Howlett, Sony Manning and Jeff Mincham. Interestingly there appears to have been little interest in the experimental ceramic movement in Japan, Sodeisha, founded by Kazuo Yagi, Osamu Suzuki and Hikaru Yamada in 1948. Sodeisha injected a new way of thinking about clay: rather than the influence of shape and spirit, they (founders) were seeking action more than a way of thinking; ‘action that would link more directly and firmly the process called pottery with our own spirit’3. That is a personal expression through clay. This was ‘new liberated work unrestrained by current ceramic art concepts (and) was probably (in response to) the trends in art and design that suddenly began flowing in from abroad’.4 However, initially, skill, technique and intimate knowledge of their materials were paramount in the success of their work. Mitsuo Shoji, who trained with the Sodeisha group, arrived in Australia in 1973 and was instrumental in bringing an understanding of this important craft movement to Australia. In 1979 the exhibition Sodeisha: avant-garde Japanese ceramics toured to Australia and the collection of works remained in Australia becoming an important component of the Newcastle collection.

By the 1970s, every major art school had ceramics courses and influences from every continent and tradition were explored, and fused into a vigorous, investigative practice. Self-sustaining studio practices became common and the market for ceramics grew. International potters continued to visit Australia and Australian potters travelled overseas and became internationally recognised. Funding through the Crafts Board of the Australia Council fuelled individual development and travel, and supported international tours of Australian work. By the end of the 80s, individual potters were beginning to receive high prices for their work but it was clear that it was to become increasingly difficult to survive from full time studio practice. Ceramic courses were decreasing and in the 90s many were amalgamated with sculpture departments. Sales dropped as well-designed and cheap imported domestic ware became more readily available.

Practice was very diverse – studio production ware was still being made and some potters moved into small commercial production as collaborations between craft practice and manufacturing were sought. Conceptual installation and sculptural ceramic work, was increasingly made no doubt as a result of closer interaction with sculpture in art schools and the preparedness of commercial art galleries to sell this work. But also as a desire to participate in the critical and interrogative contemporary art environment. Less well understood were the ceramic practices which continued to work within the historical trajectory of ceramic aesthetics. Although individual ceramic collections were increasing, a small number of major potters were nationally acknowledged and the resale value of contemporary ceramics was increasing.

The twenty first century ushers in a renewed energy as conceptual work is more confident, as it exploits the strengths of ceramic aesthetics and its own history of expression. Works in the Newcastle collection by Pippin Drysdale and Louise Boscacci exemplify this confidence, and the still life groupings of Gwyn Hanssen Pigott are an unapologetic celebration of the power of ceramics to transform space and to transport the viewer. This has become a popular form of installation in its effective animation of space and evocation of relationship. It has also found acceptance by art galleries who once again see an affinity between pottery and other fine arts. Yet another body of potters are returning to the table, to vessels, to critique and describe our small ceremonies. Working with cast bone china, limoges porcelain and earthenware with coloured underglazes, they read our culture through the contemporary table both the contemplative and the disposable.

Maybe it is too soon to speculate a revival of the heady years but there is no doubt that these new energies have provided a newly invigorated and insistent voice for ceramics within the larger contemporary art environment.

Above: Mollie Douglas, Dark Brown Storage Jar, stoneware, syenite glaze. Presented in 1970