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| From: Issue 40 #3 Sept 2001 | |
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Vol 20 No. 1, 1981, Alan Peascod, Vessel, gold lustre with reduced silver lustre, h. 50cm |
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Hey It's the Eighties - Karen Weiss ‘Rrarrarrarrrrrrrap rap, ‘Thriller’, Madonna, the Oils, Alice Cooper, Pac-man, mohawks, goths, grunge, power dressing, aerobics, breakdance, Hawke and Keating, the Bicentenary, US invades Grenada, Chernobyl Oh God, Tiananmen Square, PCs, CFCs, HIV/AIDS, glitz, Gordon Gecko ‘Greed is good’, from demonstrations to corporations, Falklands war, Solidarity, Ronald Reagan, Iran Contra, Star Wars, glasnost, perestroika,video art,Transavantgarde. What? Transavantgarde? ‘The missing pride of the conceptual artist’s work, the elitist behaviour of the artist who was playing on the amazement of the public and the element of surprise, are being replaced by the humility of creative, accessible and real work...The Transavantgarde is ...open not only towards a mythical future but also....a past removed from the rhetoric of the great traditions’. footnote Achille Bonita Oliva: An Art without Ideology. You jivin’ me, man. No, the mothafucka is serious. He the Man. Hip hop. Hip hop. Advance Australia where? |
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And Australian ceramics was moving out of an extended love affair with Leach and Hamada, with the subtle harmonies of Oriental stoneware, the restraint of Hans Coper and Lucie Ries, into colour and exuberance. In the USA, the new trends were towards primitive firings, figurative work, bright colours and rich decoration, directions that were to be paralleled in Australian work.The hallmark of the 1980’s was the exploration of surface and a move away from functional form. All these changes were to be documented, reported and commented on through the pages of ‘Pottery in Australia’ magazine (PIA). In 1985 Peter Haynes (PIA Vol 24/3) wrote a profile on the recent work of Alan Peascod. Peascod, who had been researching Islamic pottery, moved from the dry glazes and barium blues that he had developed in the ‘70s. In 1980 he was making large decorative vessels with an overall surface of gold lustre with incised line decoration which reflected the richness of Islamic decorative tradition. His inspiring work with lustre was to influence many younger potters including Graham Oldroyd, Amanda Warner and Robert Reid. In the late ‘80s, Greg Daly was to become fascinated by the extravagant surface of lustre, wholly covering large bellied vessels and using it to further dramatise his large landscape platters. In the late ‘70s, Pate’s Pottery (later Cesco) developed a range of locally produced underglaze colours suitable for use with earthenware. A palette of colours that were bright, intense and reliable and readymade, even better. By the mid ‘80s, Walker Ceramics and Russell Cowan were also featuring a range of underglazes and colour stains which had, as Megan Patey wrote in 1988 (PIA Vol. 27/4),’ blown open the vast array of decorative processes possible; as well as providing colour schemes previously not possible in ceramics.’
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Vol.
20 No. 2 1981Vincent McGrath, Clay slab form, |
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Vol.26 No 1, 1987 Vessel, extruded and impressed, reduced copper firing h.45cm, photo:Mathew Keighery |
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Most of the colleges trained students in stoneware techniques. In a reverse of the experiences of the potters exploring stoneware in the early ‘50s, for those wishing to use earthenware it was a time of experimentation, learning by trial and error. In 1985 the Mayfair Award exhibition at the new Crafts Council of Australia Gallery in Sydney featured the work of ceramic artists Stephen Benwell, Toni Warburton (Cover, Vol. 24/1), Michael Keighery, Robert Hawkins and Patsy Hely. Much of it was earthenware and mixed media, handbuilt and slipcast. It was colourful, it was striking, it was very, very new. But it was not until Ceramics ‘88, the 5th National Ceramics Conference in 1988 (PIA Vol.27/4), that earthenware was accorded its own seminar. Some other new voices working in earthenware were Jenny Orchard, Narelle Derwent, Pat Cahill, Megan Patey, Janna Ferris and Susan Ostling. Influences were diverse, ranging from the modernist angularity of Art Deco and the work of Clarice Cliff to the maiolica ware of provincial Europe and the work of UK ceramic artists Alan Caiger-Smith and Alison Britton, the former having come to Australia on a lecture tour in 1981 and the latter’s work being shown at an exhibition of British Ceramics which visited Australia in 1979. At the opposite end of the ceramic spectrum to glossy and bright, other potters were exploring raku, sawdust firing, blackfiring, pitfiring. Ray Rogers (PIA Vol 22/2) caused quite a stir in the mid ‘80s with his pitfired rounded forms across whose white surfaces drifted clouds of soft pinks, greys and blacks. Jeff Mincham’s neo-oriental vessels were raku fired and then fumed, producing a matte surface patinated with intense oranges and rust reds touched with purple and green (PIA Cover, Vol.27/2). Some ceramic artists used the figurative to pose questions - sometimes with humour as with Freya Povey’s kangaroo-woman ‘Princess Narelle’ (Collette Snowden Vol.24/4) or the wry smile of recognition evoked by the work of Lorraine Jenyns (Geoffrey Legge, Vol. 26/3), and Lorraine Lee. Deborah Halpern’s ‘Angel’ commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria, presents the viewer with an enigma- human nature, angel or animal or both? Graham Oldroyd’s figurative work (Cover, Vol. 27/2) in the mid ‘80s, drawing upon funerary pieces of the ancient world poses questions about the afterlife. |
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Toni Warburton made a series of small stages on which characters made comments on environmental issues. Diogenes Farri scratched his questions in Spanish on to harshly textured wall slabs. Vincent McGrath (Cover, Vol.20/2) made striking sculptural landscapes, based on the environmental ugliness caused by mining. Through the use of the representational, the artists made statements putting the issues that concerned them firmly centre stage. One more square must be added to the patchwork quilt of the ‘80s. It is the influence of the Japanese connection. On the one hand ceramic artists who through their work and their presence in Australia, demonstrating, exhibiting and teaching, made their own contribution to Australian ceramics: Mitsuo Shoji, Shigeo Shiga (Cover Vol. 20/2), Hiroe Swen, Satoru Hoshino and the members of the Sodeisha group who donated their work as a collection to the Newcastle Regional Gallery. On the other hand, the steady small stream of Australian potters who made their way to Japan to visit or work at kilns such as Tamba, Mashiko, Bizen and Shigaraki. Interest in woodfiring grew, with the result that two highly successful woodfiring conferences took place in 1986 and 1989 (Vol. 28/3). Work by woodfirers Janet Mansfield, Chester Nealie, Bill Samuels, Owen Rye, Steve Harrison, Ian Jones, Col Levy and Peter Rushforth drew strongly on a Japanese aesthetic. Throughout the issues of PIA in the ‘80s we see an embarrassment of riches with a plethora of educational choices, awards to compete for, and galleries to show at. In the ‘90s, that was to change. References:
‘The Crafts Movement in Australia: A History’.
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Vol 26 No 4, 1987 Sandra Taylor, Dingo Landscape, terracotta, Photo: Gudrun Klix |
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