LISE EDWARDS

“I’m interested in the shape of clay. What it was and what it can be…”

IGNIS Clay is chemically decomposed igneous rocks. In a way, firing clay returns it to a stone like state and as such it will weather and decompose like stone.

PAULINE WELLFARE

I started potting over 38 years ago, and completed Certificates 1, 2, and 3 at Lithgow and Orange TAFE colleges.
After working by myself for a number of years, I enrolled in the Distance Education Ceramics Diploma course offered by Australian National University, Canberra. I was awarded, under the ANU’s Emerging Artists Support Scheme, the National Gallery’s Product Development Award, and the Canberra Potter’s Society’s Exhibition Award. During my years of pottery I have engaged in one solo and many group exhibitions. These group exhibitions have been local, once at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, and as far flung as Nexus Gallery, Bellingen NSW, and Walker Street Gallery, Dandenong, Victoria.
For most of the 38 years, I have worked with students of Wallerawang Public School, teaching them pottery, as well as engaging in 4 mural installations. I also have adult pottery students coming to my studio, starting their own personal pottery journeys with me.
During my time at ANU, I discovered my fascination for and love of carving and polishing porcelain. There is a tactile quality to the surface that attracts me to continue with this work. With some of my pieces, I challenge people’s perception of how things are meant to look, often by sitting them at an angle.
The work I have made for this exhibition are examples of both these themes.

MELISSA KELLY

Melissa lives and works in Gilgandra – Wiradjuri place meaning Long Water Hole.

Always creative, Melissa began her ceramics journey at the Coonamble Ceramics Collective in 2015, learning to throw and sculpt clay with other creatives. She set up her home studio in 2019, as has had several regional exhibitions including Homeground at the Western Plain Cultural Centre in Dubbo in 2022. 

Melissa explores feminist themes within her work – focusing on her own identity and experiences as a woman. Her work contains a playful curiosity and seeped in magic realism. Her figurative works explore women undergoing transformative zoomorphism in ways that express their emotions. For example, Nest Woman symbolises the transformation (identity crisis) women undergo as their children grow and leave home. Others wear a crown, symbolising their empowerment and triumph (being comfortable in your own skin). Melissa brings natural elements and found objects into her works representing the wildness of nature and a childhood reared on outdoor spaces – the Warrumbungle mountain range and the Barr (Castlereagh) River. The carved urns are vessels in which her young girlish hopes and dreams are laid to rest and the “body” of the urn are the scars from life-experiences she lives with moving forward with her life. 

PETER WILSON

Peter Wilson’s pots are represented in the National Gallery of Australia (in collaboration with artist John Olsen) and public collections in Japan, the UK, Canada, Pakistan and several regional galleries in Australia. His works are held in many private collections around the world. He holds a doctorate in ceramic glazes and materials and has a keen interest in geology.

His works mainly with vessel shapes and these demonstrate a strong craft base and manifest his interest in the explorations of the materiality of ceramics, much of which is sourced locally. 

ROS AULD

Ros Auld studied painting and ceramics at the National Art School in Sydney and Newcastle, subsequently worked in the ceramic studio of John Piper in the UK, followed by teaching visual arts and ceramics at tertiary level. She has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions and her work is represented in many galleries and private collections in Australia and overseas. She is represented in Sydney by Simon Chan at Art Atrium and Messums UK.

Ros has collaborated with other artists, notably John Olsen, Gabriella Hegyes and Tim Winters over a number of years.

CATHERINE PHILLIPS

Born and raised in Lithgow, is a potter who has been working with clay for the last 25 years. She has a studio in the central tablelands just outside of Orange and her work centres around domestic wheel thrown ware. Her abstract decoration is inspired by insects; either their morphology or the trail they leave in the environment.

She studied ceramics at TAFE in the 1990’s, has exhibited in group exhibitions in New South Wales and provided tuition to small groups of interested people.

My work is enjoyed on a daily basis by many people either having a drink, eating breakfast in a bowl, dinner off a plate or simply enjoying my linear perspective.

GREG DALY

I have always drawn inspiration from my surroundings. The surrounding land, sky, light, I see from my studio have been distilled into this work, from the grasses at the doorstep to the far hills seen across paddocks full of eucalypts, and beyond, upwards into the atmospheric realm. And across all this, the importance of light itself interacting with the lustre surfaces of the work. Light falling on, reflecting off and diffusing through all that surrounds me, bringing with it colour.

The work in this exhibition continues the exploration of light and lustre glazes. This work draws upon light and interaction with the atmosphere and environment. From dappled light seen through the tree canopy and grasses, where morning light is more reflected light off clouds, morning mist or the first gold light of morning. The blood red sky at sunset.

The surfaces are achieved through lustre glazes containing silver and copper that when reduced in a third firing transform giving colours from yellows, gold, silver, red and copper. With the use of other colourants an amazing pallet of surface and colours is achieved.

JOHN DALY

John Daly is a ceramic artist, living and creating on the unceded lands of the Wiradjuri people.
Growing up surrounded by his parents’ ceramic practices and the remnant native ecologies and altered agricultural lands of the Central West formed a deep connection to creative and environmental forces. After studying a Bachelor of Science in geology and environmental science John reconnected with clay, exploring the link between geology and ceramics, between his formal training and his familial education.
Central to his art making practice has been the quandary of creating in a world of ever dwindling natural resources, which over time has lead to personal guilt in the use of virgin materials and paralysis when faced with making ‘just more stuff’ with which to fill the world. This has resulted in the use of materials that have solely come from various waste streams. Waste clay from his father’s ceramic practice is reprocessed and thrown into new forms. Glass from a broken window is crushed, grounded and mixed with the waste clay to form a low temperature glaze. An old copper pipe, carelessly thrown into landfill, is ground up and added to the glaze to create colour and lustre. The time and manual labour required to process and transform these materials is akin to an atonement for all the moments of thoughtless consumption.

GEOFF THOMAS

I have been making pots since 1972 and firing with wood in both a Spring Arch bourry box kiln and an Anagama

I like to think I take a fairly direct approach to pots.  The idea of being able to dig clay out of the ground, throw it into a pot on the wheel, formulate glazes with the inclusion of local material, build kilns and fire on wood holds a sort of fascination and mystery.

It is not always so straight forward!!

To quote others, making pots for wood firing“A little bit of tree, a little bit of me and several thousand years of Eastern philosophy.

PAM WELSH

Pamela lives in Mudgee, NSW. She has worked with clay sculpturally all of her career.
She taught Visual Arts after she gained her degree and began to produce work in ceramic, participating in local exhibitions and selling work from a Mudgee gallery. Her work has sold locally and overseas.
The first in the series that have developed in this style was shown at Mid Western Regional Gallery and called “The Princess and the Piano”.
The intricate, painterly works are drawn from the true story of Princess Alexandra of Bavaria who had the condition whereby she was utterly convinced she had swallowed a glass grand piano.
The group of works in this exhibition is titled ‘The Princess Sails to the Antipodes”. The viewer is invited to explore each transcendental world that the princess inhabits, capturing the artist’s fascination with duality-the dichotomy of reality and fantasy.
The princess “sails” to the Antipodes attempting to negotiate all the physical and intellectual challenges she encounters thus exposing for the artist interesting and amusing human conditions including pretension and the ridiculous.

SUE FOLDHAZY

My pottery studio is setup at home in my garden in Rylstone near Mudgee NSW. I have been working with clay for approx. 20yrs. I work with all types of clay from throwing functional ware to handbuilding & sculptural pieces.

I’m constantly experimenting with forms. In this series of vessels functional form, painted surfaces & sculptural form can come together in a variety of ways.

Australian landscape is my source of inspiration. I suggest the cracked earth, eroded surfaces and the iron & colours of the landscape with slips, oxide washes & glazes.

SARAH O’SULLIVAN

Drawing inspiration from the surroundings in the greater Blue Mountains, Sarah O’Sullivan began this collection by creating observational sketches of natural marvels encountered during bush walks. These sketches were then incorporated onto the surface of ceramic forms, executed using underglaze, the drawings reminiscent of early colonial images of Australia’s native flora and fauna. The delicate wash of pigment has been applied to mimic water-colour paint and to provide contrast to the raw unglazed ceramic surface.

JAYANTO TAN

Jayanto Tan is a Gadigal/Wangal based visual artist who was born and raised in a small town in North Sumatra, Indonesia. His practice draws on his family history and diasporic background, blending Eastern and Western mythologies with the contemporary world and current events. Using ceramic sculptures, found objects, authentic food, performance and installation, his work often investigates how hybrid cultures can create new identities of possibility and hope.

He is a contemporary artist who has exhibited extensively in both solo and group exhibitions in Australia and overseas. He won the 2021 Georges River Sculpture Art Prize, and Highly Commented for the 2023 Fisher’s Ghost Art Award and Dobell Drawing Prize#23. He has conducted arts projects and workshops with diverse communities and museums, included the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Maitland Regional Art Gallery and WorldPride2023. Jayanto holds a Masters of Fine Arts from National Art School. He is represented by Art Atrium Sydney.