As part of a larger project Crosshatched, two Melbourne ceramists, Ann Ferguson and Vipoo Srivilasa and visiting Indian artists Mr Pradyumna Kumar and Ms Pushpa Kumari took on the adventure of cross-cultural ceramic collaborations. There were challenges. In Crosshatched the pairs did not have a common language. Was there a universal creative language that would [...]
Posts under ‘ceramics’
Review by Christine Nicholls of the Willow Pattern Story
book_English_Chinese The Willow Pattern Story, 2008, Text by Ian Howard, Mandarin translation by Jingzhe Le, Illustrations by Lucienne Fontannaz, 3D PRECISION PTY LTD, www.Jingzhe-art.com.au, ISBN 9-78-0-9805816-0-7 book_French Le fabuleux récit du Willow Pattern, 2008, Text by Ian Howard, Illustrations and French translation by Lucienne Fontannaz, Publi-Libris, Switzerland, http://www.publi=libris.com/, ISBN 9-782-940251-57-5 Reviewed by Christine Nicholls Reproduced [...]
Janet DeBoos – hand-designed in Australia, factory-crafted in China
image In Australia, ceramics is under siege. Since the boom of the 1970s, the number of courses available have rapidly declined. For today’s iphone generation, the dedication required by clay-making poses a significant lifestyle challenge – it threatens to disconnect you from the ‘clouds’ of text and image that give meaning to the day. Of [...]
Carole Douglas – a new tradition for trash in Kachchh
Carole Douglas is an Australian who has become deeply involved in a particular craft scene in India, the dyers and weavers of Kachchh. In 2001, her engagement has been deepened following the devastating earthquake in the region. She has now developed a project that honours these crafts and supports environmental awareness. This is her story. [...]
Where in India is Australia?
image They’ve been some invigorating Melbourne-India exchanges lately. The first occurred at the RMIT Design Research Institute on Friday during a discussion about the Code of Practice for Craft-Design Collaborations. We discussed the arrangement whereby the Touareg nomads were paid half a million dollars for the use of their name in a new model of [...]
Review of From the Earth, contemporary Indigenous ceramics
From The Earth – Contemporary Indigenous Ceramics from Alice Springs Pottery, Ernabella, Hermannsburg Potters, and Tiwi Islands Gallery One, JamFactory Adelaide 13 December 2008 – 25 January 2009 Reviewed by Christine Nicholls for World Sculpture News, Hong Kong From the Earth is a survey exhibition of contemporary Indigenous Australian ceramics from the Tiwi Islands (situated [...]
Noria Mabasa carves out a dream for herself
Bell-Roberts Gallery in Cape Town is hosting an exhibition by remarkable South African artist Noria Mabasa. More than 70 years old, Mabasa is one of several ceramicists from the northern province of Venda, bordering on Zimbabwe. For the past thirty years, she has been producing figures and pots with clay sourced from a local river. [...]
A third hand between craft and trade
Christine Nicholls celebrates an exhibition that brings people of craft and trades to work together. image ‘Trades’, an innovative project conceived and sponsored by Craftsouth, Australia’s premier contemporary craft and design association, was that organization’s big ticket offering for 2008. In some respects Craftsouth operates along the lines of the artists’ and artisans’ guilds of [...]
Mapfara finds a clay embrace
image[10] The visiting Mozambican ceramicist Mapfara emerged last night for the opening of his first exhibition in Melbourne. Mapfara had been here on a Commonwealth Fellowship and had managed to settle himself in a foreign city, with a foreign language and make work in a little over three months – largely thanks to an indefatigable [...]
Tongue in cheek ceramics
image Mabelle Marra came out to Australia from Argentina in the early 1990s. She discovered ceramics at Chisholm TAFE and has been a big presence there ever since. When Mabelle returned to Argentina, she met up with an archeologist who had learnt ceramics in order to work with people in the north of the country, [...]
