Wednesday, 26 December 2018

New Work - Vitrine Exhibition at Craft May 2019

Conversations With A Landscape will present an investigation into our relationship with Australian landscape.

I have visited this area of the Victorian high country for many years. All works have been made at the site of investigation, using the pliant material of clay to capture a tangible sense of place.

These vessels and sculptures respond to a particular eucalyptus, river and surrounding landscape. Measuring 712cm in diameter and thought to be pre-settlement, this tree has significant agency. It grows on the unceded land of the Taungurung people. It stands unharvested, majestic and sublime. A survivor of the colonial impact of sawmilling, the high-country cattle industry and 19th century and ongoing farming. It stands as a provocation and reminder of longevity and undocumented history of this place.

Conversations With A Landscape proposes that we occupy a newly redefined place in nature, one that is observant and respectful. These objects explore a way of constructing and acknowledging landscape outside of colonial tropes and actions of consumption, ownership, and labeling.

Lifting texture...

Cloudy

New Work Exploration - About Place

Saturday, 25 August 2018

Studio News - July -August 2018

Thinking about universal themes, forms and figures in ceramic history. These ancient Cypriot vessels 1800BCE - 475BCE from Melbourne's Hellenic Museum have so much in common with the Pre-Columbian and Egyptian pottery on display at NGV:I.

This collection of drawings from NGV: International

Wednesday, 13 June 2018

Material Memories Exhibition

Queen Victoria Art Gallery

8 / 2-8 Wellington Street, Launceston

9 June - 20 September 2018

Material Memories brings together six interdisciplinary practitioners who are interested in creating work which sits at the interstices between art/craft/and design:Susan Buchanan contemporary artist/jeweler, Janine Combes contemporary artist/jeweler; Penelope Davis contemporary artist working with photography and sculptural installation; Eli Giannini contemporary artist/jeweler; Robyn Pelan contemporary artist working with ceramics and Sarah Stubbs artist/contemporary jeweller.
Each practitioner has sought to open a discussion and explore methods of materiality, through the mapping of existing objects/species located at Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in order to reveal and trace the story of place and visual memory. QVMAG, beyond the public galleries walls, houses an amazing collection of artefacts, such as rare indigenous butterflies and beetles, whale tusks and bones, snake skins, birds of all descriptions and sizes, small delicate marsupials all beautifully presented methodically catalogued and stored in carefully designed shelves, boxes and storage systems. In corridors and a warren of rooms is a rich repository of exquisite colonial botanical drawings, specimens and pressings, a family of Tasmanian tigers, shelve upon shelves of shells, crustaceans, corals, mammals, fish, reptiles, insects, and flora of all sizes, colors and genesis.To be in the presence of all of this is humbling, overwhelming and awe inspiring. We were fortunate to lay witness, to smell to graze to visually feast on such a vast, diverse and considered collection. Here in the caverns of QVMAG we become acutely aware that we were in the presence of species that have disappeared both metamorphically and physically from our collective imaginations. We were confronted with the past, loss, and longing. What started as an attempt to understand an object, a form, a species has morphed into trying to make sense to bring into relief a rich and resplendent collection one that is laden with science, history, poetry, narrative, and prose. A collection that speaks of and to a building, its dedicated staff, Launceston and Tasmania. Material Memories is a collective response to confront a collection and to make meaning through the act of making.The project was made possible by the Australian Government’s regional arts program, the Regional Arts Fund, which gives all Australians where ever they live, better access to opportunities to practice and experience in the arts. From exhibition wall text.