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 Tagged ‘ceramics’
Review by Christine Nicholls of the Willow Pattern Story
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
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 with permission from Asian [...]
Janet DeBoos – hand-designed in Australia, factory-crafted in China
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 [...]
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 off the north coast [...]
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.
Unlike [...]
A third hand between craft and trade
Christine Nicholls celebrates an exhibition that brings people of craft and trades to work together.
‘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 yesteryear, offering [...]
Mapfara finds a clay embrace
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 openness [...]
Tongue in cheek ceramics
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, [...]
If the Chinchorros could speak…
There was a mesmerising exhibition at the Palacio de Moneda of artifacts from the Arica region in the north of Chile. Among the wonderful works of basketry, weaving, jewellery and carving from the ancient cultures of the north are the fabled Chinchorro mummies. These predate the Egyptian mummies, originating back as far as 5,000 BC. [...]
