Canberra Potters 2019 Members' Exhibition. Watson Arts Centre. Until November 3.
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The Canberra Potters exhibition is an annual event endowed with a commendable number of prizes and awards. By its very nature as a members' event, it covers a wide spectrum of work by members at varying stages of their abilities and careers. This year there is a distinct sense of energy and inventiveness in the exhibits. Some of the works are interesting as concepts but they are let down by lack of technical skill.
Mahala Hill well deserved her Doug Alexander Prize for Luna Petrification. It demonstrates the balance between the concept and its confident execution. Hill has been working with her imaginary insects and plants since graduating from the ANU School of Art and Design in 2017. She casts these very convincing creatures from natural materials in porcelain china clay. Her winning work is a collection of tiny fungi preserved under a specimen glass on larva like-rock.
Another award-winning work is Marion Robinson's Adani Feeding Bowl. It also has a prophetic sense of warning. The artist has faithfully modelled the Black-throated Finch, an endangered bird from the proposed Adani mine area. The bird sits like the canary in the mine shaft atop a coal black bird bath.
Two award-winning works by Richilde Flavell and Alicia Cox are both innovative and sophisticated. Flavell's deceptively simple oval ceramic light Halo Light is a pared-down contemporary design of a table light. Cox's Still Life 1 is a playful inversion of tableware using the forms of cup and mug with handles. Glazed in two contrasting colours of black and white, Cox's two balanced forms harmonise gently with one another.
The Merit Award from Gallery of Small Things, was given to Tanya McArthur's Encounter - a colony of small round ceramic forms enveloped in subtle tonal variations of a pleasant warm cream glaze. Instead of a harmonious grouping however, they turn their tiny openings towards the viewer like so many demanding mouths in a chorus of silent voices.
Traditional skills are used to make attractive objects of both an aesthetic and utilitarian nature. Georgina Bryant's well-balanced and well-made white stoneware teapot would go well with Robyn Booth's pristine Jug Set in glazed and polished white porcelain. Alison Cooper's stylishly decorated stoneware platter in a unusual off-set pattern in orange and purple has an affinity with Derek R. Budd's attention to design in his geometric patterns carved into the surface of his attractive, well-executed Red Carved Bowl and Blue Carved Canister.
Among the stoneware Rita Evans' three hand-built vessels demonstrate the effects that can be achieved in stoneware through the consideration of surface, textures and colourations on unglazed surfaces. The Landscape Bottle in particular with its green/ blue colourations looks like an ancient salvaged urn from the sea.
I was continually drawn back to Katrina Leske's series of vessels Counterpoint #1 & #2 and Desert Study1.1. These wheel thrown stoneware vessels have been fired in a sagger kiln where the contained fumes of the firing have left evocative marks on their surfaces. Yet these vessels are located within a cultural context. Leske has carved their surfaces leaving raised linear patterns. In Counterpoint #1, these rhythmic lines of ridges ornamenting the vessel signify human intervention but are also reminiscent of the patterns of nature so that these beautiful vessels appear to have a physical and spiritual affinity with the natural world.