 |
 |
Jeff Doyle photography: ANU photography |
|
||
| The ceramics of
Debra Boyd-Goggin |
|
from Volume 44#1 2005 |
Of the large number of talented potters in the ACT
and region, many stand out as more than skilled in their technical handling
of the various media; many also are to be seen as more than capable within
the necessary parallel of possessing penetrating imagination. The combination
of skill and imagination - I’m sure we could add other criteria
- seems always to bring forth superb work. And of the many fitted to
these criteria in the ACT, one young potter stands out as having a future
considerably worth watching. Such is the case with the ceramics of Debra
Body-Goggin. To be sure, one acknowledges that Debra Body-Goggin demonstrates
sophistication belied by her years. She is a relative new eye/hand in
the practice, having graduated from ANU Art School a mere two years ago.
Already she is worth noticing - and has been noticed - winning various
awards and distinctions during her studies and now in professional practice
she has already garnered several regional awards, such as the Doug Alexander
Award at the Canberra Potters Society awards for 2004. Sharp at the heels
of those years’ honours came a number of group and solo shows including
selection into the emerging young artists show to be held at the Ceramic
Art Gallery, Paddington in 2005.
None of this should burden her with the tag of overnight sensation. No, this summary ‘bio’ is the basis, a foundation if you will, of a substantial vision attached to a very skilled pair of hands, and a period of intense and hard-working study. Earlier in her studies painting attracted - she still keeps an eye in as it were - but the technical and artistic demands of potting made, to her mind, a stronger case for working within a more, though differently, inclusive imaginative media. The painterly eye for colour and composition is still strong, and the products satisfy the more for this extra dimension. Not all potters are so ‘burdened’. Now then, let us look at some examples.
Early
work is already strikingly original, meticulously crafted and suggestive
of so much beyond ‘mere’ formality. And yet form is also always
elegant. Here a number of ‘vases’, plates, and bowls are penetrated
by ceramic ‘sticks’ or ‘branches’, which seem to in
part grow out of their mouths or from some lower part of their rounded forms.
They’re not bulbous or over full, though often quite squat or short central
forms which flower or explode at their top ends. These ‘explosions’ are
partly muted of course - the references are to mallee and outback scrubby spindly
type plants. It’s Alice and the Northern Territory of course - the scenes
of Boyd-Goggin’s early life and education. In other more bowl-like objects,
the attached or just proximate extras - sometimes linked by wires - sometimes
just by being placed near or on top of the bowls - become so much cutlery to
the plates’ or bowls’ picnic setting. This is intelligent, humorous,
at times wistfully melancholic - though not the least mordantly nostalgic.
Here's is a past recollected in clay with such care and detail it is vibrantly
alive, not being lost.
In a few pieces the little wires spread out as both dendritic growths and as hinted at as metaphoric fences, with little ceramic posts hooked in and wired to the rickety outback fence. That ‘outback’ reference is no accident of course - and draws us to the localising topographic layerings within Boyd-Goggin’s choices and executions of patinas and designs - indeed almost all her output. Intriguingly, Boyd-Goggin usually names each of her works, pointing directly that each is seen as a singular work and not as one from a collective set of bowls or pots being made a seria, so to speak. These names too allude to that central Australian background, to memory, to metaphor; exemplary names such as Behind Fenced Ranges, and Spinifex Style are found throughout her work.
There’s a baroque
effect in some of these early works - what we might call a proliferation
of details and ‘bits’ within any one object.
For me this is never too much, never excessive beyond formal artistic
need - true, I admit addiction to the distortions, bends, penetrations
and edginess
of this early work. But Boyd-Goggin’s reflections in 2004-05 as
evident in the most recent work seem to be moving strongly to more reticent
more
highly elegant formal constructions in which her clear leaning towards
the mannerist or baroque still finds expression. In the large number
of tall, quite massive (they’re both heavy, and even if not picked
up and weighed they are evidently works of ‘gravity’), and
long necked vases distortion is subdued, in some barely evident at all.
Rather
the penetration and imploded bends and kinks in some of the early vases,
now find expression in the slightly bending long neck, or the flattened
mouths of others. These vases are botanical and more - waivering reeds,
stems, sapling trunks - their angularity from the vertical is rhythmically
beautiful - they bow to us, sway towards and away from each other. Undulating.
Fluid. Beyond that for me too they are zoomorphic - the flattened mouths
recall some frog-like embouchures, or, the extended necks and solid rounded
bellies of so many waterfowl - a sinuous gaggle when seen in groups;
a singular harmony in isolation.
To this point, I haven’t looked at
colour; form and its weights have so dominated my eye. Of course colour
is part of the effect of the ‘object-ness’ of
the pieces. First look, see, very lightly hued almost pastel effects -
they seem mostly whites, hued with warmth but mostly washes of light greens,
yellows, or very washed out blues modulating into and between each other.
Throughout there are interlineated bold colours - some bright, others more
darkly underpainting the surfaces - brooding foundations. It’s
all achieved by a meticulous technique of spraying multiple layers -
incremental
glazes onto the surface. At distance the effect is to depict subtle landscapes, almost all with a sun-washed out horizon-line at various heights on the base areas of the vases. Up close these pale, clearly outback inspired landscapes become more complex. Boyd-Goggin’s early leaning to painting finds full expression here. Please, don’t get me wrong here, this isn’t an example of the vase as ‘other’ (but mere) surface upon which to place the ‘decorative’ landscape. I don’t see these pieces that way. I don’t think Boyd-Goggin does either. Rather they are each a more complex interweaving of ideas of landscape, narratives of biological form and human memory melded with ceramic media, and carefully layered effusions of colour as suggestions of landscape. Not a little world depicted on a surface, no; these vases are each little worlds - hence not unreasonably they each have a ‘name’. Each a smooth surface patina-ed ‘idea’? Yes, in a way - and, yes, a complex layered and exfoliating story - yes, much more certainly than pictured. They are most moving gestures meaningful and emotion packed beyond my words. I am left looking forward to the next stories for the evolving maturity already evident in these most promising early years.
Jeff Doyle teaches in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at
UNSW@ ADFA, Canberra. He writes widely on Australian subjects from
literature to art.